Moscow’s Most Colorful Buildings

In Moscow, the use of vivid and intense colors in architecture is seen as controversial: some residents consider brightly-colored structures inappropriate and tasteless, while others just find them irritating. But despite the prejudice, the city has quite a few buildings – old and new - with catchy, colorful facades. One recent example is the rainbow-colored Federal Clinical Center of Children’s Hematology, Oncology and Immunology.

The “Avangard” residential complex is lined with decorative tiles in intense colors – blues, yellows, greens and oranges – thanks to which the 20-storey oval tower boasts a truly avant-garde look.

The traditional color scheme of Russian architecture is red and white, which is why there are so many reddish buildings, including apartment buildings, in Moscow. These “red houses” in southwestern Moscow were built in the 1950s.

“Orange” would be an apt epithet for this candle-shaped house on Selskokhozyaistvennaya Street.

One of the brightest houses in the Patriarch’s Ponds neighborhood is the “yellow house,” at No. 5. It dates to the 1930s.

Sergei Skuratov’s Copper House is located on Butikovsky Lane, part of Moscow’s “Golden Mile.” It is lined with copper sheets covered with a coating of patina, which produces the unusual, iridescent green color of the façade.

Another “green” building, on Aviatsionnaya Street, is covered with fiber cement tiles.

The Chertkov House is another colorful example of Moscow’s historical architecture. This 18th-century mansion on Myasnitskaya Street has a sky-blue color.

Part of a residential block on Khodynskoye Pole, these four houses are painted in various shades of pink. Because of their shape and color, they have been dubbed “hair curlers.”

Last on the list of Moscow’s top brightest buildings comes this school for autistic children.