All-Russian Exhibition Center

This guide to the All-Russian Exhibition Center in Moscow follows the architect who designed the fairground beneath your feet, Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky, and the extraordinary brief Catherine-era planners never had to give him: build a showcase for every Soviet republic's harvests and factories in one place. You'll hear how his patron's fall in the political purges of the late 1930s reached his own staff, and what became of the architect himself. It traces how little of what you're walking through today matches what he first drew.