Seven Sinister Sisters

Moscow's Seven Sisters are seven Stalinist-Gothic monoliths - Muscovites know them as Сталинские высотки (Stalin's high-rises).  There were meant to be eight but only seven were completed (though an eighth is in Warsaw - the Palace of Culture and Science that we visited).  The seven are:

1. the Hotel Ukraina
2. the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Apartments
3. the Kudrinskaya Square Building
4. the Hotel Leningradskaya
5. the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
6. Moscow State University at Sparrow Hills
7. the Red Gates Administration Building

Gargantuan, dirty-white, crazily crenellated, featuring somewhere the hammer and sickle, intimidating in their sheer thereness, they were meant to be a show of power and they certainly scare the hell out of me.

Hotel Ukraina

***Just seen on Wikipedia that a precursor was our own dear Liver Building in our own dear Liverpool!  Will never look at the Liver Birds in the same way!

Royal Liver Buildings

And here's Warsaw:

Palace of Culture and Science
(with a touch of Capitalism)