When people think of Moscow’s grand artistic landmarks, the gilded Kremlin, the Tretyakov Gallery with its sweeping collection of Russian art, and even Saint Basil’s Cathedral usually come to mind. But did you know that beneath Moscow lies an artistic palace of its own, with more than 40 stations recognized as cultural heritage sites?
Stalin’s goal for Moscow was to turn it into a new Rome for the proletariat. He was determined to build the most magnificent city possible, and that ambition extended underground as well. Since construction on the Moscow Metro began in 1931, grandeur was the overriding objective.
The authorities hoped that, through metro stations—the most frequently used public buildings in daily life—they could both elevate public taste and showcase the superiority of communism and the strength of the Soviet Union. Precious stone from across the USSR, lavish chandeliers, colorful sculptures, mosaics, and stained glass became defining features of the Moscow Metro. Although it consumed enormous national resources, the Soviet Union ultimately left Moscow with more than 200 stations of extraordinary value.
During my time in Moscow, I set aside an entire day to ride around underground and admire the different design styles and aesthetics of each era. Here are some of my favorite stations and the unique history behind them.
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Line 5 - Komsomolskaya
- Opening date: January 30, 1952
- Architect: Alexey Shchusev Alexey Shchusev
- Russian name: Комсомо́льская
The first stop on this underground palace tour is Komsomolskaya, a masterpiece of Moscow Metro art and widely regarded as one of the most beautiful metro stations in the world.
Komsomolskaya is located near Komsomolskaya Square, where three adjacent railway terminals—Leningradsky, Kazansky, and Yaroslavsky—make it one of the busiest hubs in the Moscow Metro system.
The station’s architect, Alexey Shchusev, was one of the Soviet Union’s greatest architects. His works include Lenin’s Mausoleum and Moscow’s Four Seasons Hotel, among many other Stalinist buildings. In the Sochi Winter Olympics opening ceremony film “33 Letters Depicting Russia’s Splendor,” the letter Щ was represented by Shchusev (Щусев) and Komsomolskaya station.
Image from the internet
Komsomolskaya is a columned three-vault station, and its splendor is concentrated in the Baroque-style ceiling over the platform hall. The bright yellow background and white decorative lines look especially dazzling under the chandeliers. On both sides, marble columns in the Petrine Baroque style stand in neat rows.
The station’s design was inspired by the famous Red Square military parade of 1941. In his speech, Stalin listed renowned military leaders from Russian history: “May the valiant images of our great ancestors—Nevsky, Donskoy, Minin, Pozharsky, Suvorov, and Kutuzov—inspire you in this war!”
The 8 mosaic panels on the ceiling depict these legendary battles and figures.
This one depicts Soviet troops in front of the Reichstag after the Battle of Berlin
The lettering on the station sign has some delightful hidden details—clearly designed with care.
At the end of the platform passageway, the ceiling features a mural modeled after the Soviet Order of Victory.
The above-ground station hall is equally imposing. Six giant Corinthian columns and four pilasters support the portico. The upper part of the hall is domed, and above it rises a lookout cupola topped with a prominently set five-pointed star.
Shchusev and mural artist Pavel Korin were awarded the USSR State Prize for their contributions to the design of Komsomolskaya, while the station itself won a gold medal for design at the Brussels World’s Fair in 1958.
Line 5 - Kievskaya
- Opening date: March 14, 1954
- Architect: Yevgeny Katonin E. I. Katonin
- Russian name: Киевская
Continuing along Line 5, we arrive at another masterpiece on the Circle Line: Kievskaya. Built in the 1950s, the Circle Line came during the peak of Moscow Metro construction, when everything was in service of art—there was no such thing as too lavish, only even more lavish.
Kyiv was the capital of Soviet Ukraine, one of the constituent republics of the former USSR. To fully capture Ukrainian national character, the design competition for the station was held specifically in Kyiv. Ukrainian architect Yevgeny Katonin’s proposal stood out among 73 entries and was personally selected by Khrushchev to lead the project.
Unlike Komsomolskaya’s columned three-vault plan, Kievskaya uses a pylon-style three-vault structure. Walking through the central platform hall feels a bit like strolling through the Winter Palace or the Kremlin.
The walls on both sides are lined with enormous mosaics in gilded frames, while finely crafted plaster moldings decorate each archway and chandeliers hang from the ceiling. Stalinist opulence is on full display here.
The colorful large-scale mosaics depict a range of Ukrainian scenes: views along the Dnieper and the Black Sea, Cossack cavalry in battle, beautiful Ukrainian women and folk dances, and Ukrainian Red Army soldiers charging forward with rifles. The golden frames are elaborately decorated with flowers and wheat sheaves.
At the far end of the platform hall is a decorative composition featuring Lenin’s portrait and flags.
Even the railings in the transfer passageways between different metro lines are richly detailed and beautifully ornamented. The grandeur that the Soviet Union built with the strength of the entire nation is fully on display here.
Interestingly, Kievskaya also has an artistic dialogue with metro systems in other countries. One station entrance was designed by a French architect based on the signature Art Nouveau style of Paris’s earliest metro entrances from the 1900s. In return, the Moscow Metro gifted Paris’s Madeleine station a mural called “The Hen That Laid Golden Eggs.”
“The Hen That Laid Golden Eggs” image from the internet
Line 5 - Taganskaya
- Opening date: January 1, 1950
- Architects: K.Ryzhkov, A. Medvedev
- Russian name: Тага́нская
Taganskaya’s station sign is, personally, the most classic one I’ve seen so far—bar none. Blue background, gold lettering (somehow that combination always feels a little royal), plus a finely carved ornamental border around the outside.
This station, located 53 meters beneath Taganka Square, is also a classic three-vault pylon station, with a design that fully embraces the Stalinist architectural style.
The station as a whole incorporates traditional Russian elements. Its biggest highlight is the 48 colorful ceramic panels set into the arch walls. Floral motifs decorate the panels, while the central bas-reliefs depict Soviet Red Army soldiers from different branches of the navy and army. At the center of the gilded chandeliers, there are also blue ceramic artworks.
The lower portions of the side walls are finely crafted from yellow marble. The floor is paved with interlocking square slabs of black, red, and gray granite.
Unlike the blue ceramic murals in the central hall, the murals on the two side platforms are all monochrome ceramics.
The ground-level entrance hall perched on the hilltop is a grand, sharply angular structure. The upper part of the building is painted a dazzling gold, while the lower part is carefully built up with marble. On the interior dome is a large mural, Salute of Victory, made up of countless circles arranged like a honeycomb.
Line 5 - Novoslobodskaya Station
- Opening date: January 30, 1952
- Architect: Alexey Dushkin Alexey Dushkin
- Russian name: Новослобо́дская
Novoslobodskaya Station does not look like a palace, nor like a museum. Walking through it feels more like stepping into a magnificent underground church, instantly bringing to mind the stained glass of Notre-Dame de Paris and other European Catholic cathedrals.
Architect Dushkin had long wanted to decorate a metro station with stained glass. It was not until 1948, with the help of another renowned artist, Pavel Korin, that the design for this three-vault pylon station was finally completed.
The most eye-catching feature of the platform hall is the 32 stained-glass panels along both sides. These were carefully crafted by Latvian artists and were reportedly originally intended for Riga Cathedral. Each panel is framed in brass and illuminated from within. Bathed in their color, even the atmosphere of transferring between lines feels solemn.
It is not just the frames: even the arches, built from Ural marble, are delicately accented with brass at the joints.
At the end of the passageway is a large mosaic by Pavel Korin titled Peace Throughout the World.
Novoslobodskaya’s surface vestibule is equally solemn and majestic, like a pristine and sacred Athenian temple.
Image from the internet
Line 2 - Mayakovskaya Station
- Opening date: September 11, 1938
- Architect: Alexey Dushkin Alexey Dushkin
- Russian name: Маяковская
Switching from Line 5 to Line 2, the Zamoskvoretskaya Line, brings you to one of Moscow’s most beautiful metro stations, one that can rival Komsomolskaya. If the first phase of the Moscow Metro was mainly about building out the system, the second phase focused much more on breakthroughs in architecture and design style. Mayakovskaya is a textbook example of that second phase.
This was the first time in the world that engineers used a three-vault column design to build a deep-level mined metro station, a major technological breakthrough for its time. Compared with the pylon structure, the column structure can handle greater passenger volume while also creating a more open sense of space.
The station was designed in the then-fashionable Art Deco style. Art Deco could easily deserve an article of its own. Emerging from the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, Art Deco expressed the spirit of its era through streamlined geometric patterns and metallic colors with an industrial edge. As F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, it was “an age of miracles, an age of art, an age of excess, and an age of satire.”
Each set of four columns combines with a recessed dome to form something like a giant tent. One tent-like section follows another, creating a slightly dizzying sense of space that seems to stretch toward the end of time. This experimental design was also inspired by poet Mayakovsky’s vision of the Soviet future.
The columns are made from stainless steel, red rhodonite, and gray diorite. Under the bright lighting, the stainless steel still looks futuristic even today. The floor, meanwhile, is laid out in simple, orderly patterns of red, white, black, and yellow marble. The red marble strip running through the middle resembles a red carpet.
Look up, and you will see bright circular lights surrounding the ceiling coffers, with 34 oval mosaic panels in the center themed around 24 Hours in the Land of the Soviets.
During the Great Patriotic War in 1941, under heavy German bombardment, Mayakovskaya also served as a shelter for thousands of Moscow residents. Stalin even moved the Soviet high command into the station for a time.
Line 3 - Park Pobedy Station
- Opening date: May 6, 2003
- Architect: Nataliya Shurygina
- Russian name: Парк Победы
If you want to know what it feels like to ride an escalator for 3 minutes just to get underground, come to Park Pobedy station. I timed it precisely: from the ground-level concourse to the underground platform, there are 720 escalator steps in total, and the ride takes a full 180 seconds.
Buried 84 meters underground, Park Pobedy is the deepest station in Moscow and the fourth-deepest metro station in the world, behind Arsenalna station in the Kyiv Metro, Hongtudi station in the Chongqing Metro, and Admiralteyskaya station in the Saint Petersburg Metro. It feels bottomless; it seems like Muscovites spend at least 10 minutes a day just going up and down escalators.
Park Pobedy’s colonnaded three-vault design also feels strikingly futuristic. Maybe it has to do with the era when it was built, but the ceiling, fully lit by tube lights, looks like something out of an old-school sci-fi movie.
The curved marble columns on both sides are red on the front and gray on the sides, the exact opposite of the color scheme on the platform-side supports. The floor resembles a checkerboard, made of alternating red and yellow square marble tiles.
At the end of the corridor are two murals commemorating the 1812 war against Napoleon’s invasion and the 1945 victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Park Pobedy is also a belated product of Russia’s economic crisis in the 1990s. It was originally designed for two completely new lines, but later, because there was no money, it could only open as a station on the extensions of Line 3 and Line 8. Things really changed in the blink of an eye.
The ground-level vestibule has the same checkerboard floor. Five huge recessed coffers hold Chinese-style mushroom-shaped chandeliers, giving the space a light, lively feel.
Line 4 - Kiyevskaya Station
- Opening date: March 20, 1937
- Architect: Dmitry Chechulin Dmitry Chechulin
- Russian name: Киевская
When it first opened, Kiyevskaya on Line 4 (the Filyovskaya Line) was the new terminus of the Arbatskaya branch of Line 1. During World War II, the shallow Arbatskaya line was pierced by German aerial bombs, so it was abandoned after the war, and the station was closed in 1953.
Five years later, the Soviets put it back to use, reopening the discontinued line and extending it into the then-developing Fili district. That is how this Kiyevskaya station became part of today’s Line 4.
Kiyevskaya was also part of the second construction phase, so you can see more experimentation from the architect. The station uses a double-row column, three-span structure. The columns are classical octagonal Roman-style pillars made of yellow marble from Gazgan in Uzbekistan, with carved reliefs of wheat sheaves at the top, a typical Soviet motif.
The ceiling has three rows of circular coffers, using large fluorescent fixtures instead of the earlier incandescent lights. But if you look up, it is not exactly friendly for anyone with trypophobia.
On both the walls and floors, Kiyevskaya makes heavy use of geometric elements. The combinations of points, lines, planes, squares, and circles, together with red, white, and gray granite, give the platform and concourse a distinctly modern feel.
In the transfer passage between Line 4 and Line 5 at Kiyevskaya, there is also a row of dome decorations that are fairly simple in form, but quite attractive with the help of the lighting and color accents.
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Line 3 - Arbatskaya Station
- Opening date: April 5, 1953
- Architect: Ivan Taranov Leonid Polyakov
- Russian name: Арба́тская
Arbatskaya on Line 3 has the second-longest platform in the Moscow Metro (250 meters) and one of the greater depths (41 meters). All of it was built to win the war—well, not exactly, but for safety.
Like Kiyevskaya above, Arbatskaya also has a rather tragic predecessor. The old Arbatskaya station was pierced by German aerial bombs on July 22, 1941, and Arbat Street is the sort of place in Moscow that is comparable to Wangfujing. After the war, the authorities learned their lesson and built a new Arbatskaya line with an average depth of 40 meters, enough even to withstand a nuclear attack.
Arbatskaya’s main platform hall looks like a series of soaring arched bridges, creating one archway after another. What drew me most were the chandeliers on both sides. I would even say they are the most elegant chandeliers in the entire Moscow Metro. Brass ornamentation descends from the ceiling and blossoms into six lights, making each fixture look like a lush bouquet of flowers.
On the sides of the archways and on the walls along the side platforms, there are similarly intricate and exquisite decorative carvings.
Another interesting story is that the bomb-damaged original Arbatskaya station was also later repurposed for the new Line 4. However, even though the two stations now share the same name, there is no transfer between them. Arbatskaya also appears in the video game Resident Evil 5.
Line 5 - Belorusskaya Station
- Opening date: January 30, 1952
- Architect: Ivan Taranov Ivan Taranov
- Russian name: Белору́сская
It seems like many of the prettiest stations are near major train stations. Belorusskaya is named after nearby Belorussky Rail Terminal; many of Moscow’s train stations are named after the destinations or directions they serve. If you arrive in Moscow from Sheremetyevo Airport, the airport bus stops at Belorusskaya, so for many people this is their first close encounter with the Moscow Metro.
Belorusskaya’s platform is not very high, and there are several pairs of symmetrical arches on both sides for passenger access. Above the platform is a white plaster ceiling carved with reliefs full of Belarusian character. The floor pattern is also said to be based on a traditional Belarusian textile design.
Across the middle of the ceiling are 12 colorful mosaic panels depicting scenes from the lives, labor, and wartime struggles of the Belarusian people.
The wall-mounted lamps along the platform sides are shaped like torches with swirling bases, topped with elaborate floral ornamentation.
The graffiti in the upper hall feels completely different from the underground platform area. Instead of the traditional Soviet or classical-art style, it leans much more toward modern art.
Other Metro Stations I Love
Elektrozavodskaya Station on Line 3 is one of the most unusual and best-known stations on the line. Besides the exquisite reliefs on both side walls, the biggest highlight is the six rows of 318 ceiling lamps overhead. The inspiration may well have come from the Moscow light bulb factory near the station.
Kiyevskaya Station on Line 3 has a familiar neo-Baroque style. In addition to the paintings on the walls depicting everyday life in Ukraine, the most eye-catching feature is the mural at the end of the passageway celebrating the 300th anniversary of the alliance between Russia and Ukraine. The carvings above the columns are also thoughtfully designed.
Ploshchad Revolyutsii Station on Line 3 is located by Red Square and is probably the station most visited by Chinese tourists. It is famous for its 76 socialist-style sculptures, which portray Soviet people from all walks of life. The soldier and dog in the photo below may be the most famous dog in Moscow. Locals love to rub the dog's snout while transferring between lines, and now it has been polished to a shine.
Slavyansky Bulvar Station on Line 3 was built in 2008, so its design no longer shows any traditional Soviet style at all. From the platform decorations to the station name signs and route displays, everything echoes the idea of a boulevard.
Kurskaya Station on Line 3 has a fairly ordinary underground platform, but its above-ground hall, with sculptures and reliefs, looks like a medieval castle or church—almost like Rome’s Castel Sant’Angelo. The only difference is that the statues are warriors rather than angels.
Prospekt Mira Station on Line 5 has what I think are the most beautiful carved marble columns.
Krasnye Vorota Station on Line 1 has an entrance hall that looks like a Russian nesting doll—impossible to forget.
And the above-ground hall of Krasnopresnenskaya Station on Line 5 is as massive as a grand theater. The plaza in front of the station is a stage where Moscow street performers gather. Not far away is Kudrinskaya Square Building, one of Moscow’s Seven Sisters (more on that in a future post, haha).
Partizanskaya Station on Line 3 is a rare three-track station, and it also contains a statue of Zoya, a figure well known to the older generation.
Semyonovskaya Station on Line 3 uses four rows of columns to create an interwoven sense of space, making you feel as if you’re standing in a marble forest.
Oktyabrskaya Station on Line 5 even has decorative carvings on the platform benches.
Conclusion
With more than 200 richly decorated metro stations in Moscow, even a full day only lets you hurriedly appreciate the charm of a handful of masterpieces. If I get another chance to visit Moscow, I’d love to be a Ninja Turtle and spend a few more days darting around underground.
Out of all these stations, which one is your favorite?