Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building

This guide to the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building in Moscow starts with a warning residents still pass along about what you might find behind a wall, and traces it back to the prison camp that stood on this exact ground from 1937 until the tower was finished in 1952. You'll hear who got first pick of the flats once it opened, and which Bolshoi dancers, actors and poets followed, among them Galina Ulanova and Faina Ranevskaya. Look up at the tiered, spire-topped setbacks over the Moskva River as you listen.