Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass No. 37: Moscow’s polycentric Christmas – Radiating true spirit citywide

The seasonal transformation of Russia’s capital unfolds in every direction, reflecting a rare mastery of urban governance

A city reveals itself only in motion; to stand still is to know nothing essential of it.

Nowhere is this truth more palpable than in Moscow during the Christmas season, when the city discloses not only the solemn beauty and spiritual gravity of the holy days, ordered by the Orthodox calendar, but also the quiet discipline of masterful urban leadership that allows creative yet ordered transformation to manifest itself.

A scenic walk through the historic core of the left-bank city center, from Red Square to Old Arbat and Vozdvizhenka Street, unspools as a sequence of marvels in a festive, cinematic procession. And almost without notice, as if this cornucopian plenitude were not sufficient, another discovery, no less striking, lies in wait for those who press onward: Moscow’s seasonal transformation does not end there, but extends outward in widening circles, carrying resplendent light, gently but unmistakably, in every direction across the entire metropolis.

Moscow’s polycentric pageant: Radiating beauty in concentric circles

Tracing the course of Slavic settlement beyond the city’s fortress (kreml’) on the Moskva River’s left bank, our literary walk follows a logic forged in earlier ages, as settlement of the right bank began back in the fourteenth century.

From the Red Square, the polycentric, outward-moving route naturally advances across the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge to Bolotnaya Square in the Yakimanka district. Still counted among the city’s central quarters, crossing into it marks the moment when Moscow’s festive geography begins to fan southwards with renewed breadth and cadence.

Yakimanka, long shaped by churches, merchants’ houses, and riverside paths, opens as a district of measured transitions, where Moscow’s sacred past, civic present, and festive winter imagination converge with unforced harmony. Bolotnaya Square’s Gift Factory stands as a central draw: A festive ensemble of workshops and crafts, animated by a spirit of childlike anticipation.

From the Yakimanka District, the walk slips almost imperceptibly into the neighboring Zamoskvorechye District. There, Pyatnitskaya Street glows with garlanded arches, extending the holiday atmosphere into a quarter long associated with commerce, steeples, and the lived texture of the city beyond the Kremlin.

Drifting westward back toward the river, the visitor encounters the Muzeon Park of Arts, which hosts sculptural winter installations along the embankment. Farther south, Gorky Park contributes a glowing New Year train, offering a playful pause beside the Moskva River.

At Luzhniki, a vast open-air skating rink unfolds across 16,000 square meters, accommodating up to 3,000 skaters at a time and functioning as a full multimedia environment, with 3D projections, interactive installations, a performance stage, and a towering digital Christmas tree, all framed by a ring of winter food halls and cafés.

If the walk proceeds from Red Square in the opposite direction, a further truth comes into view: Moscow’s festive geography extends into outer districts and infrastructural landmarks rather than remaining confined to postcard locations in the heart of the city.

The Hermitage Garden in the north is an emblem of imperial-era urban repose, once devoted to musical performance, ceremonial promenading, and the rituals of refined public life.

There, winter arrives as a carefully composed retreat: Gracefully lit pathways, a softly glowing skating rink, and intimate festive installations are nestled among delicately illuminated, snow-laden trees. Together, they transform the tradition-steeped park into a serene enclave of seasonal calm and reflection, quietly reviving its historic role as a shared space of urban elegance and cultivated public sociability.

Nearby, Moscow’s creative geography expands further with technological flourishes. In the presence of the Moscow Pedagogical State University, a three-meter digital glowing book titled Poetry of Winter animates scenes from The Nutcracker while the institution’s façade hosts a synchronized light show.

The ensemble blends literature, architecture, and projection art into a single, enchanting moment of cultural intimacy, as passersby gather in hushed semicircles, watching spellbinding scenes shimmer across stone.

Eastward, the Semyonovskaya metro station stands wrapped like a festal gift, enlarged to the measure of the city. Color and light beckon wayfarers of every age, transforming ordinary transit into a playful interlude of wonder along the winter route.

Further north, VDNKh unveils Europe’s largest artificial rink, an expansive 20,500-square-metre tapestry of glassy ice, threaded with light and leisure. The surface is composed into distinct thematic zones, where children’s circles, softly illuminated bridges, and glowing art objects create a measured equilibrium between exuberant play and contemplative winter beauty beneath the open sky.

Near the Rostokinsky Aqueduct, a luminous installation of polar bears draws Moscow’s seasonal imagination deeper into the periphery, recasting the snowbound landscape as a scene of Arctic stillness: A towering mother bear and her cub stand poised on an ice floe amid glowing glacial forms, evoking the Orthodox season’s imagery of shelter,endurance, and quiet guardianship in the depths of winter.

Renewed and improved each year, this signature composition steadily gains depth through denser light and ever more intricate textures, harmoniously weaving natural symbolism and technological expression into the contemplative rhythm of the Christmas season.

As an eloquent testament to the breadth and coherence of the animating urban vision and its guiding conceptual framework, even the city’s public transport glides gently into the seasonal choreography. Born of graceful inventiveness, it becomes a moving element of the winter pageant, light meandering along its routes as the populace advances, almost imperceptibly, toward Orthodox Christmas.

Trains, buses, trams, and river vessels alike are adorned with evergreen garlands, winter motifs, and softly glowing lights, carrying the festive atmosphere into daily movement itself.

In total, 24 themed metro trains circulate beneath the city, 50 decorated and illuminated electric buses thread through surface routes, and a fleet of trams, ranging from a restored historic Tatra on Route A to 60 modern Vityaz-Moscow models, appear arrayed in festive installations. The Vityaz-Moscow trams, bearing the name of the medieval knight, are purpose-built to the city’s own measure, and emblematic of Moscow’s turn toward transport that is accessible, gracious, and visually harmonious.

Even six river electric vessels join the winter tableau, ensuring that Moscow’s holistic approach suffuses the ordinary rhythm of travel with the quiet warmth and expectancy of the Christmas season.

Moscow’s festive governance: Leading through celebration

A city reveals itself most fully and becomes most clearly legible through the gradual accrual of impressions far beyond the expected bounds.

The literary passage through Moscow, where festive space disperses across an array of luminous centers rather than gathering into a single commanding core, and where the season hence is encountered in sequence rather than in a solitary, sudden blaze, gives form to this principle, step by step.

Seen in concert, Moscow’s vast and strategically integrated festive ecosystem serving millions of people demonstrates something rare in contemporary city governance: a community’s helmsmen deploying urban planning, public space, and cultural programming to regale their citizens with an interactive, thrilling, and uplifting experience rather than alienating them with a sterile product. The consummation is an all-encompassing transfiguration in a polycentric whole: Rooted in Orthodox Christmas, Moscow breathes a true, joyful spirit throughout every quarter of the city.

Set against this achievement of unifying urban leadership rising to the level of genuine cultural stewardship, the prevailing holiday mood in a multitude of cities in the collective West feels conspicuously diminished.

There, communal squares once carried the weight of shared, sacred and secular rituals, articulated through proclamation, procession, and emblematic display. But now these sites are too often reduced to sparse, saccharine, and sponsored commercial set pieces, serving as polite, cautious gestures calibrated toward “inclusive” brand visibility rather than civic meaning and truly enlightening edutainment.

In a telling sign of religious erosion and cultural depletion, Christmas in the West is increasingly pared down to a veneer-thin ambiance, its celebration outsourced to retail corridors and private interiors, its symbols diluted or abstracted until they verge on emptiness.

Against this backdrop of civilizational unravelling, Moscow’s richly immersive and deeply heartening winter cityscape, together with the finely wrought civic art created by other Russian communities, offers a telling, luminous counterpoint.

This innovative religious-cultural model shows that festivity, when treated as a matter of the highest order of governance rather than being denigrated to trivial commodification, retains the power to shape collective conscience and memory, serving as an anchor of spiritual truth and cultural continuity.

Elevating Orthodox Christmas to this solemn plane, Moscow’s civic stewards gracefully tessellate and securely cement the mosaic of the urban multitude. Acting with composed assurance, the city custodians quietly but unmistakably signal to their gifted citizens that public space belongs not chiefly to commerce, but to shared identity and true, collective happiness, rooted in enduring faith, time-honored tradition, and authentic love of country.

[Part 2 of a series on Russia’s Christmas transformation. To be continued. Previous column in the series: Part 1, published on 19 December 2025: Prof. Schlevogt’s Compass No. 36: Moscow’s winter miracle – Reclaiming Christmas as civic art]