The view from Sparrow Hills

Last week, Olga took me for a walk around her alma mater, Moscow State University, because I'd never been to that part of the city before and wanted to see it. From the university it is a short walk to Sparrow Hills, a steep hill over a bend in the Moscow River that offers easily the best views of the city.

Moscow is a sprawling metropolis, and it really isn't designed to be actually seen from a detached perspective like other cities. There is no skyline as it were, just buildings and smokestacks in the distance. You realize this from Sparrow Hills, which is impressive, but makes you feel like a bee that has just looked back at his kicked-over hive.

Here is the view looking a little to the north. Moving from the right to the left, you can see three of the spires of Stalin's famous "Seven Sisters," which are each impressive in their own right but never really -- in my opinion at least -- dominate the skyline as some people think. At the far right is the Foreign Ministry, moving to the left in the distance is the Kudrinskaya apartment block, and in the center (near the smokestack) is the Hotel Ukraina. That little bit of Singapore that seems to have dropped out of the sky on the far left side is the famous "Moscow-City" complex, the new business heart of the city that will eventually feature the tallest building in Europe.



This next photo below is a shot looking a little to the right. Right up front is the stolid mass of Luzhniki Stadium, the home of the 1980 Olympics. Looking just above it, you can see the Cathedral of Christ the Savior with its gold dome. Just a bit further past it, you can kinda make out the gold domes of the Kremlin's cathedrals as well.