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The city is in the Central Federal District located in the west part of the Russian Federation. Historically, its position was central in the Russian homeland. It was the capital of the former Soviet Union, and of Muscovite Russia, the pre-Imperial Russia. It is the site of the famous Kremlin, which serves as the center of the national government.

Moscow is also well known as the site of the Saint Basil's Cathedral, with its elegant onion domes. The Patriarch of Moscow, whose residence is the Danilov Monastery, serves as the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Moscow and St. Petersburg have for centuries been the sites of much of the country's internationally known history and culture, and the residences of most of its famous personalities.

The city was once known as 'sorok-sorokov' ('forty-times-forty'), in reference to the many Orthodox onion domes making up the city's skyline. The look of the city was changed drastically during Soviet times, mostly due to Stalin, who oversaw a large scale effort to modernize the city by, on the one hand, introducing very broad avenues and roadways, some of them over ten lanes wide, and on the other, destroying a great number of historically significant architectural works such as the Sukharev Tower and numerous mansions and stores lining the major streets, and various works of religious architecture, such as the Christ the Saviour Cathedral. The latter was demolished to make way for a huge skyscraper that was never built, and reconstructed in the mid to late 90s.

Stalin did build seven other skyscrapers however, allegedly inspired by the Municipal Building in New York.^{[citation needed]} They form a series of huge, cathedral-like structures with intricate exteriors, and are given various labels: 'The Seven Sisters', 'Stalinist Gothic', 'wedding cake architecture' and so on. All seven can be seen from most elevations in the city; they are among the tallest constructions in central Moscow apart from the Ostankino Tower which, when it was built in 1967, was the tallest free-standing land structure in the world, before the title was taken by the CN Tower.

There are many museums and galleries in Moscow with collections that can be compared to those of the best museums in the West. Frequent art exhibitions thrive on both the new and the classic, as they once did in pre-Revolutionary times, and from their diversity in every branch of the arts - painting, photography, sculpture and so on - it would appear that the Muscovite art world is steeped in many traditions: Russian, Western, Oriental, both old and new. Two of the most notable art museums in Moscow are the Tretyakov Gallery, founded by Paul Tretyakov, a wealthy and generous patron of the arts who accumulated a very large private collection before donating it to the city, and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, which was founded, among others, by Marina Tsvetaeva's father. Currently there are two Tretyakovs. The Old Tretyakov, the original gallery in the Tretyakovskaya area on the south bank of the Moskva, houses the works of the classic Russian tradition, with famous pre-revolutionary painters such as Ilya Repin, going all the way back to early Russian icon painting with exhibits of rare originals by Andrei Rublev. The New Tretyakov, created in Soviet times, mostly houses the work of Soviet and a few contemporary artists, but there is some overlap between the two for early 20th century art. The latter includes a small reconstruction of Vladimir Tatlin's famous Monument to the Third International and a mixture of other avant-garde works by artists like Kazimir Malevich or Wassily Kandinsky, and Soviet propaganda. The Pushkin Museum is like The British Museum in that its halls are a cross-section of world civilizations, with many plaster casts of ancient sculptures, but it also hosts famous paintings from every major Western era of art - the work of Monet, Cezanne, Picasso and so on can all be sampled there.

Moscow is also the heart of Russian performing arts, including ballet. Theatres and ballet studios are very common in Moscow. The most famous of these are the Bolshoi (Big) and Malyy (Small) theatres, a centerpiece of Moscow; the Bolshoi is usually closed during the summer, but in 2005 it closed semi-permanently for reconstruction work. Ticket prices were as low as $1 in the Soviet era, but have increased dramatically since. The repertories in a typical Moscow season are exhaustive and modern interpretations of classic works, whether operatic or theatrical, are quite common.

Soviet films are integral to film history, and the Mosfilm studio was at the heart of many classics, both artistic and more mainstream productions. However, despite the continued presence and reputation of internationally renowned Russian filmmakers, the once prolific native studios are much quieter, and there are fewer independent cinema theatres in Moscow than there were around the end of the Soviet Union, having given way to multiplexes and recent Hollywood productions. The overall maintenance and condition of theatres has improved, though ticket prices are much higher and increase every year.