Russia

The capital city is located in the European part of Russia. Moscow has about 10.4 million inhabitants (2006), over 1.000 square km area, and is the largest city in Europe. Moscow is located in the Federal District Central Russia, one of the seven federation districts, and is divided into 10 districts.

It is not only the capital of Russia, but also the political, economic and cultural centre. The city has many colleges, technical schools, theatres, museums, galleries, wells, and the Ostankino Tower (540 meters high), and hundreds of churches. Moscow is the administrative headquarters of Russia and central headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church (Danilov Monastery). Since the 16th cntury, Moscow will be known as the Third Rome and since the end of the Second World War, Moscow is one of the 13 Russian hero cities .

The city, through the centuries often burnt, looted and occupied, has always fought for its freedom and every time it was bigger and more important. Factories, mills, workshops, parks and much more has been built. So Moscow, in the year 1687, the first university in Russia and about 70 years later the first university in Russia, has opened. Also the first electric tram (1890), the huge department store GUM (1893) and the creation of the Social Democratic Workers Party of Russia took place in Moscow. The industrialization had changed, besides Leningrad, most Moscow. First, Moscow became a big city. Furthermore, the Kiyevsky Rail Terminal was built. It is one of the nine rail terminals of Moscow and was built in 1917. But the radical population growth, the World War, the economic difficulties, unemployment, strikes, the changes in the social and political conditions, the overthrow of the Czar and other causes prepared the first Russian Revolution and then the October Revolution and the five-year civil war.

Finally, the Soviet Union was founded in 1922. Even after the severe destruction of the World War II was Moscow rebuilt rapidly. Between the 50s and 70s, the city was the most developed. After Soviet directives were only Russian archeologists, like the architectures Alexei Viktorovich Shchusev, Ivan Alexandrovich Fomin and Noi Abramovich Trozki and others were employed. From that time comes, for example, the house at the Kotelnicheskaya Street with 700 apartments (1952), the house at the Red Gate , the 24-storey residential house at Kudrinskaya Square (1954), the Lomonosov Moscow StateUniversity, the 28-storey hotel Leningradskaya , the Foreign Ministry (1953), the Luzhniki Stadium (1956), the Hotel Ukraine (1957), the Ostankino Television Tower (1967) and many monuments, mausoleums, bridges and other buildings. At the same time, the city grew and in 1980, the capital hosted for the Olympic Games 1980. Currently, the city has eight television stations, three international airports and three inland ports. Thus Moscow is the capital s most important transport hub and the largest industrial center of Russia.

Other famous places and buildings of Moscow, and also for the whole Russia, was of great significance and still are, for example, the Basil s Cathedral (1561), Red Square, the Kremlin, Moscow (1495 completed and since 1990 at the UNESCO List of World Cultural Heritage), the Historical Museum and the Resurrection Gate (1680) and the more than 200 years old Bolshoi Theatre. Furthermore, the Resurrection Church of Kolomenskoye is since 1994 a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is a unique white church from the year 1532. The big department store GUM, with a total area of 75,000 sq metres, is the Russian-traditionalist architecture (or neo-pseudorussischer style), and was built in 1893. Today it is a shopping centre with several tens of thousands of customers daily. It contains 200 luxury shops on three floors and is 250 meters long. The only five years old Triumph-Palace in Chapayevsky Pereulok is one of the new faces of Moskow.