What is the capital of Russia?

Moscow began as a minor fortified town and grew into the centre of Russian power by outmanoeuvring its rivals under Mongol overlordship, collecting tribute on their behalf and absorbing neighbouring principalities until the grand princes of Moscow could claim leadership of all the Russias. The Kremlin, a walled citadel on a rise above the Moskva River, has been the seat of that power for most of the period since. Peter the Great interrupted it in the early eighteenth century by building Saint Petersburg on the Baltic as a deliberately European window onto the sea, and the court stayed there for two hundred years. After the revolution the Bolsheviks moved the government back to Moscow in 1918, partly because Petrograd was dangerously exposed to attack from the sea and the front, and the capital has remained inland ever since.

Moscow's metro was built partly as a showcase, with stations decorated in marble, mosaic and chandeliers.