A new museum, a panorama of the historic breakthrough during the Leningrad Siege, has opened outside St. Petersburg, in the town of Kirovsk. The military operation known as Iskra (“Spark”) took place during January 12-30, 1943, freeing a land corridor between the besieged city and the rest of Russia. Workers quickly constructed a railroad link to bring in supplies to the city’s starving residents.
The panorama is a sculptural recreation of the Soviet offensive, complete with real weaponry and other artifacts, as well as sound and light effects. The panorama is open Tuesday through Sunday.
Moscow will wrap up its bilingual navigation project this year, after installing some 90,000 signs in Russian and English designed to make the Russian capital a bit less intimidating for tourists.
The massive signage revamp was begun in 2014 and has been a serious upgrade to the Moscow Metro interface. The project aims to be finished before the opening match of the World Cup at Luzhniki Stadium in June.
After it was topped with a spire in January, St. Petersburg’s controversial Lakhta-Center skyscraper measures 462 meters tall. Visitors can ascend to the building’s 87th floor to take in the view.
A scientific and educational complex (with sports and leisure facilities, and an outdoor amphitheater), the building, designed by British architect Tony Kettle and detailed by Russian design company Gorproject, is the tallest in Europe. It is located in the northwest of the city, in the Lakhta neighborhood.
The project was initially called Gazprom City and then Okhta Center, and was supposed to be located closer to the city center. It was moved to the outskirts after objections from preservationists and UNESCO, who said the building would interfere with St. Petersburg’s historic skyline.
Russia’s steppe reserve in Kalmykia, Chernye Zemli (“Black Lands”), has opened a new museum for visitors. The museum exhibits artifacts of various civilizations that have inhabited the area, and include a fragment of a steppe mammoth.
Kalmykia is a region near the Caspian Sea that is distinctive for its Buddhist religion and endangered saiga antelope.
zapovednik-chernyezemli.ru
The Olympic bobsleigh track in Sochi has started offering rides to tourists. Those brave enough to fly down a steep, curving track at speeds of up to 95 kilometers per hour can climb into a padded sled, according to the coordinator of the project, which is called FunBob, Andrei Adashevsky.
The Sochi track is 1,500 meters long and has 17 curves. Rides are offered to adults and kids over 150 cm tall for R4,000 (four-person bob) and 10,000 (two-person bob), in which you ride with an experienced instructor. Professional athletes can opt for the R15,000 monobob.
fun-bob.ru
The Russian government has promised to crack down on hotels that excessively hike their prices during the World Cup.
Already, there have been reports of price-gouging, including at the Agora Hotel in Kaliningrad, where the nightly rate spiked from R2,400 to R129,000 (or more than five thousand percent), and the new Quiet Gardens hotel in Rostov-on-Don, where prices increased from R1,300 to R167,000.
The Russian tourism agency Rosturizm has compiled a blacklist of 39 questionable facilities in the various hosting cities on the list.
russiatourism.ru/urgent/14666/
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