Moscow Guide
The Beliy Gorod
Manezhnaya ploshchad
In the last decade, billions of rubles were spent on humanizing Manezhnaya ploshchad, a bleak expanse created by the demolition of shops and houses in the late 1920s, where columns of tanks and marchers assembled prior to entering Red Square for the great parades of the Soviet era. To give the square and the centre of Moscow a new image, Mayor Luzhkov blew $350 million on a deluxe underground mall (daily 11am–10pm), adorned with creations by his favourite artist, Zurab Tsereteli, who clad its three levels in fake marble and gilt, capped by a dome-map of the northern hemisphere with a model Kremlin distinguishing Moscow from other capitals (merely marked by dots). The mall's roof segues into the Alexander Gardens via a Disneyesque melange of statues and balustrades, thronged with people hanging out in fine weather and drinking beer from bottles hidden in plastic bags (drinking alcohol in public places is illegal).
The square itself is named after the Tsarist Manège, or military riding school, where Tolstoy had his first riding lessons. Opened by Alexander I on the fifth anniversary of Napoleon's defeat, the building's 45-metre-wide roof was unsupported by interior columns, allowing two cavalry regiments to manoeuvre indoors.