Текст на английском про Москву

Moscow is the capital of Russia. It is a very big and old city. Millions of people live there.

The heart of Moscow is Red Square. There is the Kremlin near it. The Kremlin has got red walls and towers.

Saint Basil's Cathedral is on Red Square too. It is very colourful and beautiful.

There are many museums, theatres and parks in Moscow. The Moscow Metro is very famous. Some stations look like palaces.

Tourists like walking in Moscow. I want to go there!

Last spring I went to Moscow with my class. We travelled from Yaroslavl by train, and the journey took less than four hours. It was my first visit to the capital.

On the first day we walked around Red Square and the Kremlin. The Kremlin was bigger than I thought, and Saint Basil's Cathedral looked like a cake with colourful domes. We also took a lot of photos near the Bolshoi Theatre.

The next day we visited the Tretyakov Gallery. It has the most famous collection of Russian paintings. My favourite picture was a forest with three little bears.

I liked the metro most of all. Some stations have beautiful lamps and mosaics, and the trains come every two or three minutes.

Moscow is noisier and busier than my city, but it is very exciting. Next year I am going to visit it again with my parents.

Moscow was first mentioned in the chronicles in 1147, when Prince Yuri Dolgoruky invited an ally to a feast there. At that time it was a small settlement with a wooden fortress on a hill above the Moskva River. Over the following centuries it grew into the centre of a powerful state.

The Kremlin, which is the oldest part of the city, has been rebuilt many times. Its red brick walls and towers were built at the end of the fifteenth century by Italian architects, who were invited to Moscow by Ivan the Third. Nearby stands Saint Basil's Cathedral, which was built in the sixteenth century and is now one of the best-known symbols of Russia.

In 1712 Peter the Great moved the capital to Saint Petersburg. However, Moscow remained important, and in 1918 it became the capital again.

Today the city is a mixture of old and new. Seven tall buildings in the so-called Stalin style still dominate the skyline, while modern glass towers have appeared in the business district. The metro, which opened in 1935, is used by millions of people every day.

I have been to Moscow three times, but I haven't seen half of it yet. If you go there, give yourself at least a week.

Few capitals have reinvented themselves as often as Moscow. Burnt almost to the ground in 1812, rebuilt in the nineteenth century, reshaped by grand Soviet projects and transformed again in recent decades, it has never been allowed to settle into a single identity. Anyone who returns after a few years' absence is likely to find whole districts they no longer recognise.

This restlessness has obvious advantages. Neglected industrial zones have been turned into parks, embankments that were once lined with traffic now belong to pedestrians, and Zaryadye Park, built on the site of a demolished hotel, offers a view of the Kremlin that did not exist a generation ago. Public transport, too, has expanded so rapidly that journeys which used to require two changes can now be made directly.

Nevertheless, constant renewal comes at a price. Old wooden houses and modest merchants' mansions, which gave certain streets their character, have sometimes disappeared to make way for office blocks. Once lost, such buildings cannot be brought back, however faithful the copy. Had more of them been protected earlier, the historic centre would arguably feel richer and more authentic today.

What strikes me most, walking through Moscow, is that the city's charm often lies away from its famous postcards. Behind the busy avenues there are quiet courtyards, small churches squeezed between apartment blocks and lanes whose names still recall the craftsmen who once lived there.

In my view, the challenge for Moscow is not to choose between progress and preservation, but to keep them in balance. A capital that only looks forward risks forgetting who it is, while one that only looks back becomes a museum. Moscow, at its best, manages to be neither.