MIR Corporation has specialized in Russia travel for more more than three decades. The company’s co-founder and president, Doug Grimes, recently returned from a trip to Moscow where he had the pleasure of witnessing the drastic transformation the nation’s cosmopolitan capital has gone through over the past few years.
Moscow has always had 5-star hotels, innovative cuisine, great museums, sophisticated inhabitants, and high-end international shops, but it has lacked the kind of gracious and accessible spaces that make a city a friendly and easy to navigate.
Below are four recent changes that have given Moscow a different look and feel today, and underscore why the travel experts at MIR think now could be the best time ever to visit the city.
1. New pedestrian streets make it easy and pleasant to explore Moscow by foot. A city-wide plan, called My Street (Moya Ulitsa), began to radically transform the look of the city back in 2015.
2. Fewer kiosks make the sidewalks clean and clear. The city removed more than 100 dilapidated kiosks that sprang up just before and after the Soviet Union collapsed.
3. Zaryadye, the new park across from Red Square, provides an open green area to enjoy picnics, concerts, and great views over the Kremlin. It’s the first large public park created in Moscow since 1958.
4. The new Cosmonautics and Aviation Center is a state-of-the-art museum complex highlighting more than 120 aircraft and spacecraft never before exhibited, including the Vostok-1 descent vehicle in which Yuri Gagarin landed after the first manned space flight
Where to Stay: Four Seasons Hotel Moscow
