Sokolnicheskaya line

In short it was to cut Moscow on a northeast-southwest axis beginning at the Sokolniki Park and continuing through the Three railway terminals and then past the city centre's main traffic junctions: Red gate junction, Kirovskaya, the Lubyanka and the Manege Squares.

The remaining part of the Frunzenskaya Branch went along the Kremlin's western wall past the Russian State Library to the future site of the Palace of the Soviets on the bank of the Moskva River and terminated near the Gorky Park.

Although Moscow Metro prides itself on the best Stalinist architecture and the earlier Art Deco attempts, the stations of the first stage are very far from those.

The line extended into the Khamovniki District in 1957 coming up to Luzhniki Stadium and then in 1959 reached the Moscow State University on the Sparrow Hills.

This required crossing the Moskva river on a combined auto and Metro bridge including a station on it.

The Frunzensky radius was completed in 1964 upon the last extension into the new bedroom communities along the Vernadsky Avenue of southwestern Moscow.

At the opposite end, there were two extensions: one in 1965 across the Yauza River (also via an open bridge) to Preobrazhenskaya Square, and another in 1990 into the Bogorodskoye District.

In the south, Metro completed an extension of the line from Yugo-Zapadnaya in 2016, adding Troparyovo in December 2014, Rumyantsevo in January 2016, and Salaryevo in February 2016.