The “green line” is a self-guided tour of Irkutsk, which goes around the center of the city with several stops along it. The path is about 5k long, and can take anywhere from 2-3 hours, or even a whole day if you were to stop at even half the museums it passes. I found this […]

Moscow is a globally recognized center for the performing arts. The city hosts multiple venues for opera, ballet, music, and drama—so many, in fact, that choosing from them can be difficult. Also, many students from small towns may not have been to these types of cultural institutions before – many tend to exist primarily in […]

Activists have long campaigned for a full restoration of Russia’s famous Motherland Calls sculpture in Volgograd. Made of reinforced concrete, the massive structure has long shown concerning signs of wear – ranging from being stained by pollution to visible cracks forming. The following report details the restoration work – including the techniques and process used […]

Russia has reunited the great pre-revolutionary art collections of Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin. The collections of both Tsarist-era businessmen were nationalized after the revolution, partially auctioned abroad and then split between museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Each exhibition has been reported as an inspirational event, as the righting of a historical wrong, and […]

The “ticket mafia” has long been a problem in Russia. Scalpers buy tickets, often at deep discounts by employing the pensioners who qualify for them, and then sell the tickets at wildly inflated costs. This is not, however, the most interesting inefficiency in managing Russia’s cultural institutions. For instance, the story below details the Bolshoi’s […]

In Anna Melikian’s 2015 film Pro Lyubov (About Love), a film divided into vignettes focusing on modern love ala Love Actually, one of the vignettes focuses on a young woman from Japan who comes to Russia due to her love of Russian literature. While in Russia she hopes to find a Russian boyfriend. She goes […]

New Holland Island dates to the 18th century, but today is a compact and beautiful center of modern culture and international food in St. Petersburg. It’s a great place to grab some food and relax. It’s very similar to any brewery district in a hipster city – and was right up my alley. I visited […]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW_x-dmEWt8 Участники акции «Ночь в музее» по всей России удивлялись и восхищались грандиозными представлениями Throughout Russia, a grand Night at the Museum amazes and delights attendees Сотни тысяч россиян сегодня легли спать лишь под утро. Акция Ночь в музее объединила десятки регионов, сотни площадок. Стать героем фильма без кинопроб, прикоснуться к древностям или посмотреть на […]

An elaborate shopping mall just off Red Square and opposite the Kremlin, Moscow’s GUM (ГУМ – pronounced “Goom”) has been among the foremost shopping centers in Russia for all of its more than century-long existence. While GUM today is synonymous with high-end designer brand shopping, this wasn’t always the case. Moscow’s landmark shopping center had […]