PRICE:
Frommer's Recommended

This is one of the hotels in the Izmailovsky Hotel Complex, a collection of adjacent, nearly identical hotel towers that were originally under single ownership as Moscow's biggest hotel, with more than 8,000 rooms. Now they are four separate entities named after letters of the Greek alphabet. I've included three of the hotels in this section; the fourth hotel, the Beta, is in such disrepair that I don't recommend it. The complex is far from the city center but right next to a metro station -- and to the biggest outdoor crafts and souvenir bazaar in town, the renowned Izmailovsky Market. The drab 28-story towers are linked by terraced concrete plazas with fountains in the summer, a design that seemed futuristic when they were built in the 1980s but now seems rather bleak. The Alpha is closest to the metro and the most garish of the complex's four hotels. It was renovated in 2000 and its labyrinthine lobby now clearly posts its rates on a huge board and even harbors a sushi bar. Security appears tight, although shady characters from the nearby bazaar sometimes congregate at the bars. The corridors and stairwells remain gloomy, but the rooms are fresh.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's Moscow & St. Petersburg, 2nd Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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