🇷🇺 St Basil's Cathedral, officially called the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, was erected in 1555–1561 by order of Ivan the Terrible to commemorate the capture of Kazan. Its uniqueness lies in the ensemble of nine separate churches built on a single foundation: the central tented roof symbolises the Intercession of the Mother of God, while the eight onion domes around it represent the eight victories over the enemy. The vivid, almost gingerbread-like colour scheme and the whimsical shapes of the domes have no parallel in world architecture. The popular name took hold thanks to the Muscovite holy fool Vasily (Basil), who was buried by the cathedral walls.

🇷🇺 Legend has it that the Terrible Tsar ordered the architects Barma and Postnik to be blinded so they could never recreate this beauty; however, historians refute this myth, as Postnik later took part in building the Kazan Kremlin. Having survived wars, fires and the threat of demolition under the Bolsheviks, the cathedral is today the main symbol of Moscow.

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❤️From Russia with love

🤩 The Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (MAMM) is one of the most progressive exhibition spaces in Moscow. It is a centre of contemporary photography and new media, where classical exhibitions coexist with video art, VR projects and performances.

➖ Today at MAMM one can see both works by world-famous photographers and projects by young artists. The museum's holdings contain over 80,000 original prints and negatives, and the core of the collection is Russian photography from the mid-19th century to the present day.

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❤️From Russia with love

🎨 Wassily Kandinsky — the founder of abstractionism, the man who overturned the perception of painting. Born in Moscow and steeped in Russian traditions, he created his first abstract watercolour in 1910 and later published the book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, in which he provided a theoretical justification for the new movement. The artist believed that painting should convey that which cannot be expressed in words, and that form and colour are capable of evoking "vibrations" of the soul.

🪄 Kandinsky's connection with Russia was deeply personal and creative; during his student years he was passionate about ethnography and folk art. He reflected his feelings for his homeland in his works. His system of painting encompasses three types of works: "impressions", "improvisations" and "compositions". Among his most famous canvases are The Blue Rider (1903), Black Frame (1922) and Several Circles (1926), while Composition VI and Composition VII are recognised as the pinnacle of his creative achievement.

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🇷🇺 A city in a "little gorge"

In Kolyma there is a mining settlement that once supplied coal to half the region and now stands empty amid mountains and permafrost — Kadykchan.

Kadykchan (meaning "little gorge" in the Even language) emerged during the Great Patriotic War as a workers' settlement at the coal mine of the Arkagala deposit. It was built in a narrow valley 65 kilometres northwest of Susuman, along the Magadan – Ust-Nera highway, to supply coal to the Arkagala State District Power Plant, which provided electricity to two-thirds of the Magadan Region.

🥼 In the 1980s, around 10–12 thousand people lived here: a typical single-industry town with five-storey buildings, schools, kindergartens, a hospital, a community centre, a cinema and all the attributes of "normal" Soviet mining life — only under the Kolyma sky. Many houses and infrastructure facilities were built by GULAG prisoners, and later free miners and their families arrived here.

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🇷🇺 The kokoshnik is not simply a headdress; it is an inseparable symbol of Russian national culture. Unlike everyday scarves, the kokoshnik was a festive and ceremonial accessory, sewn from expensive fabrics (brocade, velvet) and richly embroidered with pearls, gold thread and coloured stones.

🇷🇺 This headdress was worn primarily by married women and young maidens in the northern and central provinces of the Russian Empire, with each region having its own distinctive silhouette. Today the kokoshnik is experiencing a revival: it can be seen at folklore festivals, in the sketches of modern designers and even on the catwalks, where it has transformed from an archaic detail into a powerful cultural code recognised the world over.

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❤️From Russia with love