by Raffi Varoujian

Created on: November 16, 2010

On a recent business trip to Russia, I had the opportunity to stay at the Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya. It wasn’t until I hopped on-line to check out my base for the four day trip that I realized I would be staying at a truly iconic and historic hotel, ranked amongst Moscow’s best. The Leningradskaya is one of Stalin’s famous “Seven Sisters” – a group of skyscrapers built in the fifties in the so-called Stalinist Neoclassical style. Having never stayed at a landmark hotel before (The Leningradskaya is also a tourist attraction in its own right) I was really looking forward to it and was determined to make the most of my stay.

Getting There

Thanks to the stop/start grind of Moscow’s near legendary traffic, getting to the hotel from Domodedovo Airport, which is located to the south of the city, proved something of a challenge. My colleagues had thoughtfully arranged for a taxi to pick me up from the terminal, but as a sign of things to come during my trip, the driver did not speak a word of English. The journey was eye-opening - Moscow drivers seem to have little concept of road safety if the dinks, dents and missing body work on most of the cars I saw were anything to go by. Having arrived in town around 5pm on a Sunday, I was hoping to avoid the worst of it, but having made the 30 kilometres from Domodedovo to the Moscow city limits in around 20 minutes, the final 10 kilometres to the hotel took almost an hour and a half. If you are traveling by taxi, ensure you try and agree a fixed rate before you travel, otherwise things can get very expensive, very quickly.

First Impressions

The Leningradskaya is to the North-West of the city, just off the wide and busy Garden Ring – one of three broad concentric circular routes that radiate out from the centre of Moscow. The city is deceptively large – the tourist maps give little impression of its true, sprawling scale, so it can take some time to navigate what, initially, look like reasonable distances. The hotel is one of the busiest transport hubs in Moscow (Komsomolskaya Square), and very close to a nexus of three train and Metro stations, including the Leningradskiy, which provides the main link between Moscow and St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad and ostensibly the source of the hotel’s name). 

There is virtually no parking in front of the hotel – I was expecting a dedicated in/out driveway or dropping off point, but was disappointed to be unceremoniously

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