Mayakovskaya

This guide to Mayakovskaya metro station in Moscow opens on November 6, 1941, when waiters carried trays of beer, bread rings, and sandwiches onto a stalled train, forty days after German tanks reached the edges of the city. It traces why this deep station suddenly became the most heavily guarded room in the country that night. Overhead, it follows Alexander Deineka's wartime mosaic ceiling of parachutists, pilots, and pole vaulters, a design that had already won a grand prize at the 1938 New York World's Fair. Each mosaic is best seen standing directly beneath it.