Morning:
14°c
To get one idea of modern Moscow, go to the Ritz Carlton Hotel.
A brand new version of a fin-de-siècle luxury hotel, it is all gilt and marble and heavy cornices. Ornaments billow, sofas puff and a coffee-plus-bottled-water (and don't even think of asking for water from a tap) costs about £20.
There are Himalayas of cushions on your bed and a futuristic rooftop bar, with coloured lights and projected films of catwalk shows.
Accessorised with a spectacular view of the Kremlin's fairytale skyline and conspicuously good-looking women (the men generally less so), it makes Philippe Starck look like a minimalist.
Or else there is Turandot restaurant, the hangout of celebrities and politicians. This is the lavish replica of a baroque interior, based on Puccini's opera, amidst whose barely-sugar columns and trompe l'oeil ceilings you can sample an Asian menu designed by Alan Yau, of Hakkasan fame.
It was built on the site of an historic building, in theory protected, whose protection proved worthless when it came to replacing it with something more lucrative.
Why have real history when you can have a glamorous make-believe version of the past?
Turandot and the Ritz Carlton embody one version of Moscow, news of which has reached many who haven't been there: ostentatious, opulent, over-the-top, outrageous. Blingy.
As far as possible from the grim years of the late communist period. The Ritz Carlton is built, significantly, where once stood the Intourist Hotel, also known as “the Rotten Tooth”, an austere, uncompromising block from the Brezhnev era. The new hotel is as unlike the old one as can be.
But there are other Moscows. A few doors from the Ritz Carlton you can sample a raucous Tex-Mex bar, where you have to push your way into a crowd through a band performing at the entrances, or dubious places where, as is common, you enter via airport-like metal detectors.
There is also the cultivated, reflective, sometimes melancholic aspect of Moscow, living side-by-side with wealth and power as it does in Russian literature.
You can get a sense of this, albeit a touristy one, in the Central House of the Writers, a ramble of 19th-century literary rooms where you can have an atmospheric meal.
And, alongside the glitz of new Moscow and the domes of old Moscow, there are relics of the time when the city's architecture changed the world.
In the 1920s, their revolutionary optimism not yet curdled, idealistic architects built workers' clubs and bus stations and utopian housing projects that created an image of a better society.
The style was modern, clean-lined and undecorated but infected with the imaginative recklessness that has always been a feature of Russian architecture.
Stairs sweep and swoop, walls curve and dramatic overhangs, containing theatre auditoria, jut into space. Bold Cyrillic graphics, in revolutionary red, brand the walls.
Now these heroic works are fragile and threatened. Built with low budgets and of insubstantial materials, they have not been treated kindly by the Moscow climate.
There is little nostalgia for the early years of the Revolution and current Muscovite taste is against them.
They are prey to something called “restoration”, which is actually the demolition of historic buildings and their replacement by crude, approximate replicas.
There are, at least, a few signs that taste is shifting. Last year the 28-year-old Dasha Zhukova opened the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture where, as at Tate Modern, a vast industrial building is used to bring contemporary art to the public.
The industrial building in question is a handsome bus garage by Konstantin Melnikov, the most inventive of all the early revolutionary architects.
Zhukova, surely tired of being described as Roman Abramovich's girlfriend, has installed a spectacular construction by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, who once built a “a palace” in London's Roundhouse, and a display of contemporary art — including Jeff Koons, Dan Flavin and Cindy Sherman — from Franco is Pinault's collection.
An Antony Gormley show is set to open this week.
The restoration of the Garage, by its freeholders rather than Zhukova, is far from perfect, but it is still the best chance to see architecture of this period.
Where Dasha leads, others will follow in rediscovering these buildings. So I hope, for they are part of the city's soul.
Moscow is a city of islands: not literally, like St Petersburg, but in the sense that its people and places are statements of themselves. Everyone goes around with their personal carapace, in winter to protect against the cold but at all seasons to show who they are.
Working people wear old-fashioned-looking caps, the wealthy display extremes of couture in places such as Turandot.
Its most famous buildings are also islands, proclamations of power by big egos, which compete with little respect for each other and leave gaps in which more delicate places can flourish.
St Basil's Cathedral is one such great work, pitched by Ivan the Terrible like the gaudy tent of some just-arrived warlord.
Others are the “Seven Sisters”, the Manhattan-inspired skyscrapers in Ghostbuster Gothic, ordained by Stalin, that are more fantastical than anything in New York.
The more delicate places include Patriarch's Ponds, the park where Mikhail Bulgakov's great novel The Master and Margarita starts.
The city is a permanent joust of power, ostentation and culture in which Stalin's wedding cakes and the high-minded works of the 1920s take their part.
Recently power and ostentation have been tending to get the upper hand. It's worth getting there while its more vulnerable beauties still remain.
Details
THE HOTEL -The Ritz-Carlton Moscow (0800 234 000, www.ritzcarlton.com) has doubles from £399 room only.
THE RESTAURANT - Turandot (26/5 Tverskoi Bulvar, 007 495 739 0011), main courses £10-£39.
THE ART GALLERY - Antony Gormley's Domain Field, a huge installation of 287 sculptures (right) made from the body moulds of 200 volunteers, will be on show at the Garage from 17 July to 2 September. The Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture (00499 503 1038). 19a Ulitsa Obraztsova. Metro: Mendeleyevskaya, www.visitrussia.org.uk
Reader views (4)
It was so interesting to get know about us from the foregners. Regardless discrepant reviews i can say that all was written it is true 
- Ann, Moscow, Russia
As a regular visitor to Moscow I can tell you that it is a far safer city than London. I have never witnessed the kind of drunken, anti-social behaviour that is endemic in London. The Metro is the best in the world, cheap, fast and very reliable. Getting to and from DME is easy and cheap on the Aeroexpress train, likewise SVO with the new train service. The public transport service in Moscow puts London to shame both in terms of reliability and cost, something that Boris should take a very close look at before the Olympics kicks off. Of course Moscow can be very expensive but so can London. In fact prices are pretty much the same in both cities. The only redeeming feature of culture in London is the free entrance to museums and art galleries.
- Malcolm, London
Looks like this bloke has every bad experience conceivable to man in Moscow. I have lived in the city 6 years and felt compelled to write against this ugly and jaundiced stereotype he so poorly articulates.
Some facts:
1. Moscow is the only city I know in Europe where young children walk to school alone. Moscow is a safe town by and large but remember it is the biggest city in Europe with its share of goons. The scam to which he refers is as old as the hills and has happened to me. I wont repeat what I told them at the time but for any tourist you should have enough common sense to ignore and walk away.
2. The taxi situation is the best in the world as random punters stop for fares. If you don't speak Russian and are a skinny small bloke who constantly looks over his shoulder then maybe you should use the metro system which is the best in the world. There are also plenty of licensed taxi companies that cost a lot less per mile than London mini cabs. Its a simple case of being organised!
3. Ditto the airport! DME is a doddle reach from the centre of town by train. In fact so is Sheremetyevo these days. Traffic is an abomination in Moscow so best get the train.
He is right about Red Square however, it is stunningly beautiful! Enjoy!
- Ross, london
Moscow is easily the worst place I have ever visited in the world.
I would say if you have to see Moscow don't walk anywhere on your own. There is a terrible quandary in Moscow that Taxi's are ridiculously expensive for short journeys but it is not safe on the streets. Just seconds walk from the hotel I was approached by conmen, one pretending to drop money and another running over pretending to be a policeman asking for my passport. I would say to people make sure you get to the airport three hours before your flight, and note the DME can be a two hour taxi ride form the centre. I was caught up in a huge angry crowd for over an hour trying to get through passport control with many around me missing their flights and getting pushy.
Expect extremely rude service generally in shops and restaurants, even out with Russians in a group this happened. Yes Red Square is very nice but no you can't relax and enjoy it.
- Lee W, London
