Dungeon Atlas

Album released - a guide to the Moscow metro

The publishing house "WAM Books", known for its luxurious albums on art and history, as well as the magazine of the same name - World Art Museum, has released a guidebook "Moscow Metro". This is not the first time that a publishing house has turned to the capital's subway - two years ago, for the 70th anniversary of the metro, they released a huge album and an issue of WAM magazine, but now they have come up with a more democratic guide - its cost is only 100 rubles. The soft cover and thinner paper than its older brothers should not disappoint - the quality of printing, as usual with WAM, is at the same level (chic printing on coated paper), and the content sometimes surpasses expensive editions. Again, the new album was released in two versions - in Russian (in blue) and in English (in red).

From expensive books on the metro, the new edition also inherited a format - not the classic pocket book guidebook, but a huge tome, which is not very convenient for traveling on the subway. However, the publication should be judged not by the laws of mass guidebooks, but by the laws of the Moscow metro, without exaggeration, the most luxurious in the world, but at the same time not the most functional. It makes sense to travel through its underground palaces not with some little book, but with this album, feeling almost like a pioneer with a medieval geographical map in your hands.

It will be difficult for the owner of this “map” to go astray: the guide presents five routes - the best stations, as well as four lines - the ring, “red”, “blue” and “green”, that is, those where the stations that have become classics of Russian architecture. Four stations were declared “the best of the best” - “Kropotkinskaya”, “Mayakovskaya”, “Revolution Square”, “Teatralnaya”. Thus, the best architect in the informal ranking was Alexey Dushkin, the author of three stations on this list.

Photographs, both modern and archival, of unrealized projects, as well as images of bas-reliefs, mosaics, and individual elements serve as illustrations for texts written with the most enthusiastic intonation (how else can one write about masterpieces?). Information about the architectural features of the station is interspersed with myths, legends are mixed with true stories, which, however, are also sometimes difficult to separate from myths. Here, for example, is one story. Nikita Khrushchev allegedly disliked the “Kievskaya” Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya line. Out of jealousy, he built “his” “Kievskaya” Circle Line, and then began to fight against architectural excesses so that no one would surpass “his” station. And it doesn’t matter whether this is true or not, readers and users of the guidebook can themselves compare the two “Kyiv” ones; for this purpose, the book contains mosaic layout diagrams. Thanks to the diagrams, you can find out, for example, that the tractor drivers in smart shirts on the Koltsevaya are not just anyone, but the crew of the first machine and tractor station. Similar guides to mosaics are given for Mayakovskaya, Teatralnaya and Novokuznetskaya.

Of the modern stations, the book included the “blockbusters” of recent years - “Sparrow Hills” and “Victory Park”, as well as the new exit of the Mayakovskaya station. The choice is eloquent: “Victory Park” and the exit of “Mayakovskaya” are a real hymn to “palace” architecture, however, “Sparrow Hills” does not fall out of this scheme - after reconstruction, the light “thaw” “Lenin Mountains”, previously soaring above the water , began to resemble a palace hanging over the river.

The trend is obvious. In his interview with Vremya Novostey, Nikolai Shumakov, chief architect of Metrogiprotrans, said: “The pressure of the 30s is, willy-nilly, present today in our underground architecture.” And in such a guide-album, faceless “centipedes” with walls lined with tiled tiles, or practical subway stations built in the official 70s would not look very convincing, even chic printing would not save them.

Alexander ZMEUL