Good Morning everyone!! Or because of this post today, Здравствуйте! Which is hello in Russian if I'm not mistaken, if I am feel free to correct me. The first but certainly not last part of my new series "Amazing Places around the world!" is on Russia! Well not all of Russia, we'd be here forever if it was, so I've picked the capital city of Moscow to be the center of this article. I've always wanted to visit Moscow, mainly because I'm fascinated with Russian culture; the architecture, the food, the folklore, and the history. Unfortunately this article will lack the experience from actually going to Russia, although I do plan to visit someday! So the first thing I want to talk about is Saint Basil's cathedral, it's positively beautiful. It's so vivid and colorful, and it looks like a palace out of a fairy tale. So a few fun facts about St. Basil's, number one: It was built by Ivan Vasilyevich also known by most as "Ivan the Terrible" the first tsar of Russia. He commissioned is in the year 1554 and saw it finished in 1561, although he was interred at the nearby Archangel Cathedral. Number two: The cathedral itself is made up of nine chapels, which are all lined up to points on a compass, now onto fact number three: the magnificent color scheme was not added until two hundred years later, before that it was said to be white to match the white stone of the Kremlin. The colors were said to have been modeled after a biblical description of the Kingdom of Heaven from the Book of Revelations in the Bible. Fact number four: it is one of the center pieces of the Red Square, which if you have ever been to the Red Square or googled it, that becomes apparent because you can find it in most pictures of the location. Moving on to the next place we'll talk about that is in the great city of Moscow, is the Kremlin! The Kremlin is the oldest and largest fortress in Russia, while also having the status of being one of the largest in Europe, the Kremlin was built on the orders of none other than Prince Yuri Dolgoruky (1099-1157) who is also the founder of Moscow. The Kremlin was the official residence of the Russian princes and tsar's from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, then for the communist leaders starting with Lenin in 1918. It is now the residence of the Russian president Vladimir Putin. Now enough of the Red Square, lets move onto the Bolshoi Theater, the iconic home of Russian ballet and opera. The history of the Bolshoi theater started in the year 1776 when the Empress of Russia granted Nikolai Titov permission to found a public theater, this is where the history of the theater started. Shortly after poor Nikolai went bankrupt and was forced to sell to two Italian owners who then sold it to another Italian, until sometime after it was sold to Pytor Urusov. The building he built however burnt down and he decided to sell the license to the Englishman Michael Maddox, who built a brick theater on the plot of land where the Bolshoi stands today. However the Bolshoi was almost demolished by Lenin in 1918, who insisted that opera was a bourgeois art and was to costly. His mind was later changed by Joseph Stalin. Well this is all I can fit into this article without making it to long, but I hope you enjoyed it! Part 2 of "Amazing Places around the world!" will be coming soon! If you have any suggestions for locations I should research for later articles then comment on this post!
Also if you want to try a classic Russian food, here is a recipe for Borscht!
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/borscht-357129
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