As the Engineer’s Eyes tours grew more popular, Bagautdinov branched out into English-language tours and co-founded Archigeek. Archigeek offers a variety of tours in and around Moscow by foot or bus or even bicycle. More traditional tours are available — the Kremlin, Red Square, the metros — but it also offers more unusual ones highlighting Moscow’s avant-garde and art nouveau: tours of Narkomfin, VDNKh, the Metropol Hotel and the Pertsova House, for example. One tour highlights the work of the legendary Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov (1853-1939), whose pioneering advances assisted the constructions of the Melnikov House, GUM and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.
Stalinist architecture has very visibly left its mark on the city. The era’s skyscrapers are internationally recognized symbols of Moscow, subsequent only to the Kremlin and St. Basil’s. But the stories behind their constructions are incredible, and a tour of these skyscrapers is well worth the time. Tours that focus on Stalin-era buildings include looks at the Foreign Ministry, Tverskaya Ulitsa, Moscow City Hall, the Crimean Bridge, Gorky Park, the VorobyovyGory Panorama and Moscow State University.
