Mayakovskaya Metro Station

Mayakovskaya is one of the most famous stations of the Moscow Metro, located on the Zamoskvoretskaya Line in the Tverskoy District and named after the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. It opened on 11 September 1938 as part of the second stage of the metro's construction and became the world's first deep-level column three-vaulted station with a single island platform. In 1939 the station's design was awarded the Grand Prix at the World's Fair in New York.

The station was initially planned to be named "Triumfalnaya Ploshchad" after its location, and then "Ploshchad Mayakovskogo," before the concise name "Mayakovskaya" was settled on. The first architectural design, executed in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance, was rejected for failing to make use of the potential of steel columns, and the project was substantially reworked by architect Alexei Dushkin. In building the station, steel structures were used for the first time in Soviet metro construction instead of reinforced concrete: columns of polished ribbed stainless steel, combined with Ural rhodonite stone and Georgian marble-like limestone, gave the station a lightness and elegance unusual for a deep-level metro station.

The vault of the central hall is decorated with thirty-four oval niches containing mosaic panels made of smalt on the theme "A Day of the Soviet Sky," created after sketches by the artist Alexander Deineka in the workshop of Vladimir Frolov in Leningrad; of the original thirty-five panels, one was lost during the installation of blast doors in the 1950s. A bust of Vladimir Mayakovsky appeared at the station only after the war, in the late 1950s — the poet's theme was absent from the original design.

During the Great Patriotic War the station served as a bomb shelter, and on 6 November 1941 a ceremonial meeting of the Moscow City Council dedicated to the anniversary of the October Revolution was held here, at which Joseph Stalin delivered a speech. Since the 1980s the station has held the status of an architectural monument, and since 2001 it has been included among Moscow's most valuable cultural heritage sites. In the mid-2000s the station underwent a large-scale reconstruction, including the replacement of escalators and restoration of the vestibules, completed in 2010. Today the station remains one of the most striking examples of pre-war Soviet architecture and is often listed in guidebooks as one of the most beautiful metro stations in the world.