It's big, it's brash, it's in-your-face, and they don't even hope you'll "have-a-nice-day!" - they just ignore you. Moscow is everything that you heard - but nothing like you expected it to be! So pack your sense of humour and your energy reserves for the high-energy city that never sleeps - and leave your prejudices at home...

Moscow is a constantly self-renewing city - and it's current incarnation is a lot nicer-looking than before! Muscovites like "big", and "bigger" is better still! Casting-off its concrete grey cocoon, Moscow has emerged from the soviet era as a fledgling butterfly. Squillions of roubles have gone into building projects, landscaping, infrastructure, and more besides....

• The Moscow Kremlin is the nerve-centre of the country - but one which has been there for hundreds of years. Forget analogies with the Pentagon! The Kremlin is a C15th fortress which has more in common with the Tower of London - a "city within a city". And at the heart of this city is Cathedral Square, boasting the most prestigious and elaborately-decorated churches in the Russian Orthodox faith. Also within the Kremlin is the Armoury Museum - and once again, leave your prejudices at home! There's no armour in this museum - instead, the Treasure of the Tsars (including the Faberge Eggs), housed for safekeeping in the Kremlin's most secure building - the former Armoury.
• It's easy to be bedazzled by the oversized communist-era buildings - and miss the real Moscow completely. But it's there, hiding behind the tower-blocks, if you want to find it! See Ryabushinsky's extraordinary art-nouveau mansion, the elegant homes of the C19th bourgeousie, and the charming atmosphere of Moscow's most desirable apartments overlooking Patriarch's Ponds. Follow in the footsteps of the characters of the banned novel "The Master & Margarita" (the most famous "Moscow novel" of them all), but don't slip in the sunflower oil...
• No matter how many times you've been there - the sheer size of Red Square always catches your breath. Lenin is still there if you want to visit him - and the queue is quite short now that schoolchildren from all over the USSR are no longer dragged to see the Great Leader. St Basil's Cathedral is the obligatory photo without which you cannot show your face at home, but there's lots more to see here, including the nicely-restored interiors of GUM - a C19th Shopping Arcade, despite the nonsense you'll read about it being a "communist department store"!
• ... and then there's the amazing ensemble of religious buildings at the Novodevichy Convent (and the gruesome story of Peter the Great's sister's imprisonment there).. and the Kolomenskoye Palace complex... and the Tretyakov Gallery... and the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum... and the Bolshoi Theatre.. and the History Museum... and a boat ride on the Moscow River... and the Izmailovsky Weekend Fleamarket and the Moscow Metro... and... and.... and they told you Moscow had less to see than St Petersburg??

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