The arrival is via the Moscow Canal, and the first monument in the Russian capital is the terminal itself. Built in 1937 and fully restored, the Northern River Terminal raises its long white façade shaped like an ocean liner, topped by a slender spire, on the edge of the Khimki Reservoir. The Soviets designed it as the showcase of the "port of five seas," the idea that Moscow, through its canals, reaches the Baltic as well as the Black Sea. The listed building can be visited like an architecture museum: restored halls, a panoramic rooftop terrace, and a park with fountains that slopes gently down to the quays.

From there, the city centre is easy to reach: Rechnoy Vokzal metro station is about a ten-minute walk away, and its line runs directly to the historic heart in about thirty minutes.

Red Square and the Kremlin

No photograph really prepares you for the scale of the place. Red Square opens on one side onto the twisted domes of St. Basil's, on the other onto the brick walls of the Kremlin and the façade of the GUM department store, lit up at night like a stage set. Inside, 19th-century iron-and-glass roofs cover three shopping arcades where people come as much to look as to spend. The citadel itself can be visited: cathedrals with gilded frescoes, historic cannons, well-kept gardens. Get your tickets in advance and allow a good half day for the whole thing, security checks included. Distances are deceiving in this immense capital: the metro is better than a taxi at rush hour, and good shoes are needed everywhere.

Zaryadye and the Banks of the Moskva

Steps from Red Square, Zaryadye Park layers artificial hills, vegetation from Russia's different regions and underground concert halls. Its V-shaped bridge over the Moskva offers one of the most photographed panoramas in the capital, with the Kremlin on one side and the Stalinist towers on the other. The redeveloped embankments then invite you to walk to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, whose golden dome can be spotted from afar. The river boats plying the Moskva are a pleasant way to extend the walk: an hour on the water is enough to grasp the city's immensity.

The Metro, an Underground Museum

The ride to the centre is already a visit. Several stations of the Moscow network — chandeliers, mosaics, marble, bronze — were designed as people's palaces under Stalin. Komsomolskaya, Mayakovskaya and Ploshchad Revolyutsii, with its bronze statues whose lucky dog Muscovites rub, each deserve a stop. Fares are paid by contactless card, and trains run every two minutes.

Arbat, the Tretyakov and the Neighbourhoods

If there is time left, Arbat Street unfolds its street musicians, bookshops and cafés in a former artists' quarter, and the columned façade of the Bolshoi Theatre can be admired two stops away, even without a ballet ticket. Painting lovers will cross the river to the Tretyakov Gallery, which brings together medieval icons and the great Russian masters. Each neighbourhood in the centre has kept its character, and getting lost in the lanes around the boulevards is one of the pleasures of the stop.

In the evening, the metro takes passengers back north, and the white terminal lights up its spire above the reservoir again. A day in Moscow only skims the surface of the city, as everyone knows when walking back up the gangway. But few capitals leave such a clear impression: that of a power that puts itself on display, even underground, in its palace-stations.