Things to Do in Russia: City Guides & Audio Tours

Russia is a country on a continental scale, stretching across Eastern Europe and North Asia and spanning eleven time zones. The best things to do in Russia include exploring historic cities, discovering its religious and artistic traditions, and experiencing landscapes that range from Arctic tundra and taiga to steppe, semi-desert and subtropical regions. Neywo offers free audio guides for 6 cities in Russia, with 1,592 narrated places in total.

What to see and do in Russia

Russia’s enormous size means that no single itinerary can represent the whole country. Its cities offer the clearest introduction to its history, culture and changing identity, while its wider landscapes reveal the influence of climate, distance and forests.

Moscow

Moscow is Russia’s capital and largest city, as well as Europe’s most populous metropolitan area. Its history reflects the rise of the Grand Principality of Moscow, the development of the Tsardom of Russia and the political changes that followed the Russian Revolution and the Soviet period.

For a first city visit, explore Moscow through its architecture, theatres, monasteries and historic estates. Neywo’s Moscow guide includes 712 narrated places, including the Central House of Architects, Praktika Theatre, Chudov Monastery and Izmaylovo Estate.

St Petersburg

St Petersburg is Russia’s second-largest city and a major cultural centre. Founded during the imperial period, it represents a different side of the country from Moscow, with a strong connection to Russian art, architecture and literature.

A walk through St Petersburg can include the Tauride Palace, Prachechny Bridge, Palace Square and the Old Saint Petersburg Stock Exchange – Southern Warehouse. The city guide contains 580 narrated places, making it one of the most extensive ways to explore the country’s cultural capital.

Yekaterinburg

Located in the Urals, Yekaterinburg is one of the country’s important urban centres. Its places reflect the city’s architectural, religious, academic and musical life.

Among the narrated locations are the Filitz Mansion, the Church of All Saints, Sverdlovsk Philharmonic Hall and Ural Federal University. The guide includes 118 narrated places, offering a way to discover Yekaterinburg, Russia, through its landmarks and stories.

Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad stands apart from the other Russian cities in this guide. Its narrated places include the Queen Louise Rotunda, the Astronomical Bastion, Königsberg Cathedral and Kaliningrad Zoo.

The city has 82 narrated places on Neywo. Together, they provide a route through different layers of its urban history and present-day character.

Sochi

On Russia’s southern side, Sochi offers a contrast with the country’s northern and continental regions. Its guide includes 52 narrated places, among them the Zubova Shchel viaduct, Circassia, Sochi International Airport and Sochi Arboretum.

The city is also a useful starting point for thinking about Russia’s ecological variety. The country includes southern mountain landscapes and subtropical areas as well as forests, steppe and far-northern environments.

Vladivostok

Vladivostok represents Russia’s far eastern reach. Its 48 narrated places include Kinoteatr Ussuri, the Oceanarium of Vladivostok, the right half-battery of Tigrovaya Battery and the Soviet submarine S-56.

The city belongs to the Pacific-facing side of a country whose territory extends across eleven time zones. Its landmarks help illustrate the scale of Russia and the different regional histories contained within its borders.

A Russia travel guide through history and culture

Russia’s history developed through a long succession of states, empires, revolutions and upheavals. The early medieval state known as Kievan Rus’ adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire in 988. After its fragmentation, Moscow rose to prominence and led the unification of Russian lands. The Tsardom of Russia followed, and expansion continued through conquest, annexation and exploration.

Peter the Great later proclaimed the Russian Empire, which eventually became the third-largest empire in history. That imperial world ended with the Russian Revolution, which abolished the monarchy. After the civil war, Russia became the largest and principal part of the Soviet Union. The Soviet period brought rapid industrialisation and immense human suffering under Joseph Stalin, followed by the country’s emergence as a superpower during the Cold War. In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved and Russia became the Russian Federation.

Culture is equally central to understanding the country. Russian is the official and predominant language, and it is the most widely spoken native language in Europe and the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia. Russia is constitutionally secular and protects freedom of religion, while Orthodox Christianity has a deep historical presence.

The adoption of Orthodox Christianity helped establish a long tradition of icons and frescoes. In the early fifteenth century, Andrei Rublev created some of the country’s most treasured religious art. Russian literature later became one of the world’s most influential literary traditions, while music developed from church music, folk songs and dances before expanding into later forms.

New Year’s Day and Russian Orthodox Christmas, celebrated on 7 January, are the country’s most popular holidays. Together, language, faith, art, music and literature give Russian culture its many layers.

Landscapes across eleven time zones

Russia’s geography is defined by scale. It has a coastline of more than 37,000 kilometres, although many places lie far from the sea, and it shares land borders with fourteen other countries. Around half of the country is forested, giving Russia the largest forest area in the world.

The landscape changes dramatically from one region to another. The far north contains tundra and polar deserts, while other areas include taiga, mixed forests, steppe, semi-desert and subtropical environments. Much of the country has a humid continental climate, with extremely severe winters in inner northeastern Siberia.

Russia is also highly urbanised, with about three quarters of its people living in urban areas. Railways and roads connect long distances, and the railway network exceeds 87,000 kilometres. The Trans-Siberian Railway is among the routes associated with journeys across the country, linking the idea of travel in Russia with its extraordinary east–west scale.

Explore Russia with Neywo

Neywo has free audio guides for 6 Russian cities, with 1,592 narrated places in total and 30 walking tours. Narration is available in 11 languages. Each story plays as you reach the place, at your own pace: there is no group and no schedule.

Choose a city, start walking and let the app tell you the story of each place as you arrive. It is a simple way to explore Russia independently, whether you are discovering Moscow, St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Sochi or Vladivostok.