Metro
Moscow metro is quite reasonably considered a masterpiece of architecture. It was opened on May, 15 in 1935. The best architects of Moscow worked at the metro project. In spite of the fact, that Underground Palaces were an ideology campaign of 1930-s, symbols of October Revolution were placed everywhere, like 5-pointed pavilion of Arbatskaya metro station, 5-pointed stares which crown the columns of Kropotkinskaya metro-station and many others like these, the stations Dvorets Sovetov (Palace of Soviets, now Kropotkinskaya), Sokolniki, Mayakovskaya, Krasnye Vorota (Red Gates) got Grand-Prix awards at the International Exhibitions in Paris and Brussels. It is an unbelievable, but true fact, that more marble was used for facing the first 13 stations than for the decoration of all the royal palaces before the revolution. During World War II, the metro was used as a bomb shelter. The organs of the Red Army's General Headquarters were functioning in the Kirov metro station, later called Chistye Prudy (Crystall Clear Ponds). At first the station was constructed as memorial to a Communist Party leader, who was killed in 1934. Underground stations continued to be constructed during World War 2. Mosaics of for the Novokuznetskaya station were moved from blocked St. Petersburg, then-Leningrad, where millions of people died from hunger. Construction of the Circle Line was finished in 1954. The great victories theme sounded in the most splendid among all Kolsomol station. After Stalin's death more than a hundred reminders of his personal cult was removed from the metropolitan. The city grows day in and day out, so the construction of metro still goes on. Now, the Moscow metro has 11 lines,162 stations, embraces 264 kilometers of track and serves 9 million people each day. There is a Museum of the history of the Metro at metro station Sportivnaya. Apart from the lines of common knowledge, the alleged enigmatic Metro-2 may exist, which connects the government buildings in the center of the city with a semi-mythical underground town in some suburbs of the capital.
