How to ‘visit’ 25 cities of Russia without leaving Moscow (PHOTOS)

Travel by train from St. Petersburg to Moscow, climb Mount Elbrus by funicular and get stuck in traffic near Moscow City. All in one day. In the Moscow diorama museum ‘Tsar-Maket’ ('Tsar-layout') you can see Russia on a 1:87 scale model and meet its tiny inhabitants.

Travel Russia by a mini-train

The first city where your acquaintance with Russia begins is Pskov with its ancient kremlin and giant train station. Just like on a real railway, apart from trains, there’s a locomotive repair depot, as well as several tracks with railroad switches and even people who’ve boarded the wrong trains!

In general, trains and roads are the main theme of the layout. Its creators came up with dozens of different routes between settlements and, just like in real life, dispatchers follow them and promptly conduct repairs.

Next stop is St. Petersburg. With its Palace Bridge that is drawn twice a day. With St. Isaac’s Cathedral, shipyards, a wedding on the embankment during a white night, a tourist bus that takes people along famous avenues. And a bit of irony about the climatic features of the city – it rains the whole “night” (or, as the locals say, it has rained in St. Petersburg since the day of its founding in 1703).

Moscow, meanwhile, meets you with giant and very realistic traffic near the skyscrapers of Moscow City. Unlike cars in other regions, Moscow ones are not moving, they just shine their headlights sadly and honk their horns. But there’s a bonus for “pedestrians” – down the road from the traffic a chocolate factory is in operation, which can be run with a push of a single button to get a real chocolate bar from its window.

In the middle of Moscow, not far from the Kremlin, of course, an archaeological excavation is underway. “Underground” you can see the Novoslobodskaya metro station and its astonishing mosaics (we talked about them here). Just like in the big format, trains arrive at the station every two minutes.

From Moscow, we travel to the south of the country and find ourselves in Rostov-on-Don. What is Rostov without soccer? Every 11 minutes, “evening” comes and a giant stadium hosts a soccer match with fans gathering round to cheer for their favorite team.

We move on to the main sea and mountain resorts of Russia. The highest point – of course, on Mount Elbrus, towards which travelers with backpacks strive.

In the underground part of the mountain, of course, speleologists discover fantastic creatures.

To reach Volga Region, we go through the countryside with cozy wooden cabins, animal farms and small vintage stores.

There’s even “burned down” and “abandoned” buildings.

Kaliningrad Region is located, obviously, aside from the main part of the diorama. You’ll immediately recognize its cathedral in the middle of the city and the tourist Fishing Village.

The Tsar-Maket’s “Easter eggs”

The ‘Tsar-Maket’ opened only in 2021, but 30 people have been working on it for five years and it is still a work in progress. They constantly add details, attractions and, of course, new narratives and new human models. As of today, the country is “populated” by about 100,000 tiny people. But not just people. If you take a good look, you’ll see very strange characters.

At a rock-music festival, ninja turtles are ordering pizza; in Moscow, Kazimir Malevich paints from nature his abstract ‘Sportsmen’ on a roof.

In a sleeping area of Moscow, you can see a replica of the famous photo ‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’.

In St. Petersburg, the four musicians from The Beatles cross a road in a familiar style.

As the designers told us, they don’t know how many “Easter eggs” their colleagues hid in the diorama. For now, they have counted more than 30, but these ideas come to them spontaneously.

This is mini electric bus from mini Moscow.

Right now, the designers are working on the continuation of the diorama in Siberia. The territory is vast, but they promise to finish it within a year. We’ll share a secret with you: we got a sneak peek at Lake Baikal and it was very impressive!