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Natalya Sergunina: City tours in honour of International Tourist Guide Day attracted over 3,500 visitors

More than 3,500 Muscovites and tourists enjoyed free tours of the city in celebration of International Tourist Guide Day. 
Н.Сергунина: более 3500 человек посетили серию экскурсий по случаю Всемирного дня гида

The programme was put together by the Moscow Committee on Tourism in conjunction with the Moscow Department of Culture and various tour agencies and associations.

“Over 1,500 people signed up to the campaign's website on the first day of registration alone. In light of this demand, the project partners decided to arrange extra tours. In total, about 130 tours ran from 21 to 23 February,” said Natalya Sergunina, Deputy Mayor of Moscow.

The informative walking tours for Tourist Guide Day were organised by well-known city tour agencies such as Moscow Through the Eyes of an Engineer, The Best City on Earth (mskbest.ru), See and Go, and many others.

“It was a special day both for our guests and for us – they had a great time walking around downtown Moscow and we received wonderful feedback,” commented tour guide Tatyana Maksimova .

The tour guides (who are members of the Russian Tourist Guides Association) conducted 27 tours of the historic city centre, particularly around Kitay-Gorod, Zamoskvorechye, and the Arbat.

“I had guests on my tour from Kolomna, Tambov, Astrakhan and, of course, Moscow. They asked about the history of printing in Russia, and I told them about the work of typesetters, batyrshchiks and teredorshchiks,” said professional guide Yelizaveta Blinova.

Also available were themed tours of Moscow dedicated to sport in the Russian Empire, the Bolshoi and Maly Theatres, and even entire theatre districts.

Tours of the capital's landmark cultural sites and museums also proved very popular. The Moscow Department of Culture organised 40 city tours as part of the programme. Participating venues included the Tsaritsyno Museum Estate and the Kolomenskoye Museum Reserve, the Mikhail Bulgakov Museum, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and the Zoo.

A number of walking tours were run by staff from the Moscow Museum sightseeing tour agency. These tours delved into the history of the settling of the Moscow region by the Slavs, the city's unique development in the 12th–17th centuries, the region's first major manufacturing works (now home to the Vinzavod and Artplay cultural clusters) and much more.

VDNH organised a special programme for its visitors on Tourist Guide Day. Sightseeing and themed tours were held around the VDNH complex, giving guests an opportunity to visit the VDNH Museum, the Cosmonautics and Aviation Centre, the Slovo Slavic Writing Centre and the open day at the City Farm. Defender of the Fatherland Day was the theme of a special walking tour held on 23 February.

Tours around Gorky Park shed light on the Park's history from 1928 to the present day. The 'Legends of the Avenue of Leaders' tour educated guests about the avenue's monuments and sculptures of Soviet leaders, the journeys they have taken, and how they laid the groundwork for what would become the unique Museon Art Park.

A full list of the tours and sites that joined the campaign can be found at https://discover.moscow/images/guide-day/.

About:

International Tourist Guide Day is celebrated on 21 February. This year, it celebrates its 30th anniversary. The holiday was established by the World Federation of Tourist Guide Associations. Its purpose is to inform a wide audience of the importance of tourist guides' work.

International Tourist Guide Day was first held in 1990, the same year the Russian Tourist Guides Association was founded in Moscow. The Association's guides speak 27 languages. In addition to all the major global languages, the association also has guides who speak Bulgarian, Hungarian, Greek, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, Romanian, Turkish, Finnish and Swedish.

There are currently around 2,000 Russian-speaking guides and about 1,700 foreign-language guides working in Moscow, including those who speak rare languages and sign languages.
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© 2018-2024, ANO "Project Office for the Development of Tourism and Hospitality in Moscow"
All rights reserved. All materials of the site are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, provided that the link to the source is indicated (in case of using the materials of the site on the Internet – an interactive link).