Moscow is one of those capitals that overwhelm you with their scale: everything here is big, monumental and steeped in history. At its centre rises the Kremlin, a walled citadel of red towers that has been the seat of Russian power from the tsars to the present day, and at its feet opens Red Square, crowned by the fantasy of coloured domes of St Basil's Cathedral, the image the whole world associates with Russia. All around are enormously wide avenues, Stalinist skyscrapers shaped like wedding cakes, golden Orthodox churches and a metro so beautiful that people visit it like a museum.
But Moscow isn't just power and stone. It's also the city of the Tretyakov Gallery and its icons, of the Bolshoi and its ballet, of the cafés and bars along the boulevards, of the huge parks where Muscovites skate in winter and sunbathe in summer. It's a 21st-century metropolis living alongside a thousand years of history, capital of a vast country stretching across eleven time zones, and from its Yaroslavsky station the legendary Trans-Siberian sets off towards the Pacific.
It's worth saying clearly and without drama: because of the war in Ukraine and international sanctions, travelling to Russia today comes with particular conditions. There are no direct flights from the West, foreign bank cards don't work and several governments advise against travel. Many travellers from countries such as Argentina still go without problems, but find out about the current situation, take out insurance and check the official advice before deciding. This guide is informative and cultural, meant to help you understand and enjoy the city, not an invitation to ignore those risks.
Officially founded in 1147 by Prince Yuri Dolgoruky, Moscow was at first a minor outpost compared with older cities such as Novgorod or Vladimir. Its rise began in the 14th century, when the princes of Moscow became tribute collectors for the Mongols of the Golden Horde and steadily gathered power, until Ivan III the Great threw off the Tatar yoke in 1480 and unified the Russian lands around the Kremlin. Ivan the Terrible was crowned the first tsar in 1547 and had St Basil's built. Although Peter the Great moved the capital to Saint Petersburg in 1712, Moscow remained the symbolic heart of Russia: Napoleon took it and watched it burn in 1812, and the Bolsheviks made it the capital again in 1918. It survived the Nazi siege of 1941 and was the centre of Soviet power throughout the Cold War. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The historic heart of Russia: the capital that grew from the Mongol yoke to today's Kremlin, surrounded by the old cradle cities of the Golden Ring.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Moscow first appears in the chronicles in 1147, when Prince Yuri Dolgoruky ('the long-armed') invited an ally to a feast at a frontier outpost on a wooded hill beside the Moskva River. That chance meeting became the city's official founding date. Back then Moscow was nothing much: a wooden fort on the edges of Kievan Rus, far behind rich, ancient cities such as Novgorod, Vladimir or Kyiv.
Everything changed with the catastrophe of 1237-1240, when Batu Khan's Mongol hordes swept across the Russian lands and made the principalities subjects of the so-called Golden Horde. Russia lived under the 'Tatar-Mongol yoke' for almost two and a half centuries, forced to pay tribute. And that, paradoxically, is where Moscow's rise began. Its princes, shrewd and patient, won the favour of the Mongol khans and became the collectors of tribute from the other Russian cities, keeping a share for themselves. With that money and influence they steadily bought up land and power. Ivan I, nicknamed Kalita ('the moneybag'), consolidated this policy in the 14th century, and he also persuaded the metropolitan — the head of the Russian Orthodox Church — to move his seat to Moscow, giving the city decisive religious prestige.
In 1380, Prince Dmitry Donskoy defeated the Mongols for the first time at the Battle of Kulikovo, a victory more symbolic than final, but one that turned Moscow into the hope of liberation. The city grew around its wooden kremlin, burned and rebuilt several times, on Borovitsky Hill.
The great leap came with Ivan III, known as Ivan the Great (1462-1505). In 1480 he refused once and for all to keep paying tribute to the Golden Horde and, after the so-called 'Great Stand on the Ugra River', brought Mongol rule to an end. Ivan III united the scattered Russian lands under Moscow — including the proud republic of Novgorod, which he subdued — and married Sophia Palaiologina, niece of the last Byzantine emperor. From this came a powerful idea: with Constantinople fallen in 1453, Moscow saw itself as the 'Third Rome', heir to Orthodox Christianity, and adopted the Byzantine double-headed eagle as its emblem.
Ivan III had the Kremlin rebuilt in brick and stone: he brought in Italian architects who raised the red walls and towers we still see today, along with the great cathedrals of Cathedral Square, blending Russian style with the Renaissance. The Kremlin stopped being a fort and became the monumental seat of a rising state.
His grandson, Ivan IV the Terrible, was crowned in 1547 as the first 'tsar' (from the Latin 'caesar') of all Russia. He conquered the Tatar khanates of Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan, opening up the Volga route, and to celebrate the capture of Kazan he had St Basil's Cathedral, with its colourful domes, built on Red Square. But his reign was also one of terror: he created the oprichnina, a personal guard that spread fear, and in a fit of rage he killed his own son and heir. When he died with no secure successor, Russia sank into the chaos of the 'Time of Troubles' (Smutnoye Vremya): famines, pretenders and the occupation of Moscow by Polish troops. In 1612 a people's militia led by the butcher Kuzma Minin and Prince Pozharsky freed the city, and in 1613 an assembly elected Michael Romanov as tsar, founder of the dynasty that would rule until 1917.
In 1712, Peter the Great, determined to modernise Russia and open it to the sea, moved the capital to his brand-new city of St Petersburg on the Baltic. Moscow lost its status as capital, but not its soul: it remained the spiritual and traditional heart of the country, the city where tsars were crowned (they were still crowned in the Kremlin's Dormition Cathedral), the old Russia set against the Europeanised Russia of the north.
The most dramatic episode of its modern history came in 1812, during Napoleon's invasion. After the bloody Battle of Borodino, the Russian army decided to abandon Moscow without defending it. Napoleon entered the city on 14 September expecting the tsar to surrender, but found a city that was almost empty. That same night fires broke out, and within a few days they had consumed two thirds of Moscow, then built mostly of wood. With no supplies, no shelter and winter closing in, Napoleon had to begin the disastrous retreat that would destroy the Grande Armée. The burning of Moscow became a symbol of Russian sacrifice and resistance, immortalised by Tolstoy in 'War and Peace'. The city was rebuilt over the following decades, this time in stone, with new boulevards, and the monumental Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was raised in its honour.
The 20th century brought revolution. In 1917, the fall of Tsar Nicholas II and then the seizure of power by Lenin's Bolsheviks changed the country forever. In March 1918, fearing a German attack on St Petersburg (renamed Petrograd), the Soviet government made Moscow the capital again, and Lenin moved into the Kremlin, which became the centre of power once more after two centuries.
Under Stalin, Moscow was transformed by one five-year plan after another. Churches and entire neighbourhoods were demolished to make way for colossal avenues; in 1931 the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was dynamited to make room for a gigantic Palace of the Soviets that was never finished (an open-air swimming pool was later built on the site, and the cathedral was rebuilt in the 1990s). The metro opened in 1935, conceived as a 'palace for the people', with marble stations and mosaics. After the Second World War came the 'Seven Sisters', Stalin's neo-Gothic skyscrapers that dominate the skyline, among them the State University.
The most dramatic moment came in the autumn of 1941, when Nazi Germany launched Operation Typhoon to take Moscow. The Germans got to within a few dozen kilometres of the centre; they could be seen from the outskirts. The city prepared for street-by-street fighting, but a fierce defence, the arrival of Siberian reinforcements and a brutal winter halted the offensive. The Battle of Moscow was Hitler's first major defeat on land and a turning point in the war. The Soviet capital held out, and in 1945 it hosted the great Victory Parade on Red Square.
During the Cold War, Moscow was the capital of a superpower: home of the Soviet Kremlin, launch point of the space race (the Monument to the Conquerors of Space and VDNKh date from that era), host of the 1980 Olympic Games — boycotted by the West — and centre of an empire that stretched across half the world. In 1991, the break-up of the Soviet Union was decided here: Muscovites lived through that August's attempted coup, with tanks in the streets and Boris Yeltsin standing on one of them in front of the White House (the Russian parliament building), and in 1993 a new constitutional crisis that ended with the same building being shelled.
The 1990s were hard: economic crisis, mafias and inequality. But from the start of the 21st century Moscow turned into a gleaming, expensive metropolis, with glass skyscrapers in the Moscow-City district, revamped parks such as Gorky Park, a metro that keeps on growing and an intense cultural life. Today it is one of the largest cities in Europe, with more than twelve million inhabitants, capital of a country that spans eleven time zones.
Moscow is also the centre of the power that, since 2022, has been waging the war in Ukraine, which has brought international sanctions, the end of direct flights to the West and isolation from much of the world. For travellers, the city is still a monumental and fascinating destination, but it is worth seeing it with that double awareness: of a thousand years of extraordinary history, and of a present full of tension. Understanding its past — the Mongol yoke, the tsars, the fire of 1812, the revolution, the war — is the best way to read what you see today at the foot of the Kremlin's red towers.
