Moscow Metro’s legendary sculptures and images

May 15 is the anniversary of the Moscow Metro. Each day, during the past 75 years, millions of people have descended into the metro system for an efficient ride to their destination. Almost every station has secrets, peculiarities and stories of its own. Matvei Manizer’s sculptures at Ploshchad Revolyutsii station are believed to possess a mystical power. The most popular of the Manizer sculptures is “Frontier guard with a dog.” It is easily identified by the goldish gleam of the nose of the dog at the boarder guard’s feet.

The idea to build the Moscow Metro arose in 1890, during the reign of Alexander III. Coach drivers, who had ruled Moscow’s public transport for almost three centuries, opposed the idea, and it was abandoned. Eventually, the first metro line between the Sokolniki and Park Kultury (pictured) stations opened on May 15, 1935, offering Muscovites an alternative to cramped coaches.

The Kiyevskaya station on the Koltsevaya Line (Circle Line) features a mid 20th century mosaic entitled “Fight for the Soviet government in Ukraine,” that is humorously called visionary.

In recent years, people have jokingly claimed there is a Red Army soldier with a notebook talking on a mobile phone. Actually, the device in the soldier’s hands is a military walkie-talkie.

The Moscow Metro can also be used as a museum of paleontology. You can see the imprints of fossils from organisms that lived on the Earth in prehistoric eras. The marble contains fossil ammonites, nautiluses, sea urchins and gastropod mollusks. One of the most beautiful exhibits is the large shell of a nautilus in the red marble at the Dobryninskaya station of the Koltsevaya Line (Circle Line).

The Rimskaya station is devoted to Italy. There is an operating fountain in the pass between the Rimskaya and Ploshchad Ilyicha stations. Rome itself has no “Moscow” station, but there is a Moscova station in Milan, named in memory of the Milanese soldiers who took part in the Battle of Borodino under Napoleon.

Many people have seen the mysterious symbol at the Kurskaya station, “Kurskaya station of the Greater Ring.” The symbol is a reminder of the unrealized plans in the late 1940s, during the construction of the present circle line, of a design for a small circle line to pass under the boulevards. The project was not implemented, and the word “Greater Circle Line” acquired another meaning: it now refers to a plan for line that could eventually connect Moscow’s residential districts.

The Partizanskaya (pictured) and Polezhayevskaya stations have three tracks instead of two. There were plans to build a huge stadium near the Partizanskaya station, and a 3-track junction was built to increase the station’s passenger capacity. Two lines were to take passengers to the Serebryany Bor (Silver Forest) park and the other for the Strogino district.

The third track at the Polezhayevskaya station is now used in film production. Almost all Russian movies, TV shows and commercials that use the metro are filmed on this non-operating platform.

The Vorobyovy Gory (Sparrow Hills) station immediately became a favorite rendezvous for lovers after its opening in the late 1950s. Before a reconstruction, couples met at the station, went up the escalators and walked to the top of the Sparrow Hills. The station had been hastily built for the International Youth Festival and more than one generation of Muscovites met there. In the mid-1980s the station fell into disrepair and was eventually closed for reconstruction. In 2002, the Vorobyovy Gory station reopened, this time without escalators.

A small room in the south vestibule of the Sportivnaya station contains a history of the Moscow Metro. This “people’s museum” features wooden turnstiles, bright change machines, track switches, a collection of tokens and even an operators cab. The museum has no space for all the exhibits collected during the 70 years of the metro’s existence. Photo: Metro communication equipment.

The People’s Museum of Moscow Metro History includes scale models of metro cars.