The Moscow metro

Elide Siviero

My friend Teresa has been in Moscow. She sent me some pictures from this trip. The ones that impressed me the most were the pictures of the Moscow metro stations. I couldn’t believe that those pictures referred to an underground railway: I had in front of my eyes the one of Milan, Rome, Naples, where the various stops are more or less clean, sometimes dirtied with writing, sometimes crumbling or with broken escalators, others closed because they cannot be used. In short, talking about the subway station certainly doesn’t evoke something beautiful. Those of Moscow are small museums at your disposal. They look like the halls of imperial palaces: wide, large, full of magnificent chandeliers hanging from the ceiling; round with frescoes of various images of nature; marble benches surrounded by stuccoes of fine workmanship. Such a marvel to leave one speechless. Investing so much in the beauty of a subway station must have a profound purpose, I wondered. The motivation given by the guide was that Moscow had to appear as a splendid city in all its facets, even those that concerned its subway stops. A sort of need to show its supremacy, its beauty even in these situations:…