Submay: Mayakovskaya

Final stop. Mayakovskaya Station, Moscow.

Are there no ugly stations on the Moscow Metro? Probably not. And just maybe Maykovskaya is the most beautiful of the beautiful. It was opened in 1938 and is part of the Zamoskvoretskaya Line.

It was named after the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and is considered one of the finest examples of pre-World War II Stalinist Architecture. It is also the first station in the world to feature colonnades on both sides.

Mayakovskaya is one of a number of Moscow stations designed by Alexey Dushkin. He didn't hold back. There are rows of columns made of pink rhodonite, stainless steel, marble and white Ufaley. The floors and walls are finished in four different shades of marble and granite, while the ceiling features 35 mosaics, known as the "24 Hour Soviet Sky".

Mayakovskaya was awarded the Grand Prize at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Not that Dushkin was overly joyed. "Mayakovskaya could have been more impressive. We failed to materialize all design plans", he is reported to have said later. Picky picky picky.

(Credit to markthomasphotos.com)