360° panorama by Kolesnikov Sergey.
Click the image to open the interactive version.

For many commuters around the world, a subway journey means speeding from one drab station to the next, surrounded by too many uncomfortable, impatient bodies. Completely different story was in USSR and now in Russia. In Moscow, St Petersburg, Kiev, Minsk and other big cities metro stations were designed as architectural wonders. Taking the subway is akin to walking through a national heritage sit. Depending on where you get off, you'll receive a crash course in such diverse architectural movements as Baroque, Art Deco, Futurism, Modern or Hi-tech, and face from stained glass windows, marble columns, crystal chandeliers, gilded mosaics and painted scenes from Russian history to modern iron and glass. Russia's first metro system was part of Joseph Stalin's first Five-Year Plan to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s. The main idea was to show its citizens and the world the power and possibilities of socially oriented state. All this magnificent underground palaces were build as a transport system for the ordinary people. Now Moscow Metro is the busiest metro system outside of Asia, the world’s busiest by daily ridership and the 6th longest in the world (200 stations, route length is more than 350 km).

http://www.360cities.net/image/moscow-metro-komsomolskaya-station-2