For many people around the world, a subway journey means speeding from one dull station to the next,surrounded by too many uncomfortable, impatient people. But on the Moscow Metro, taking the subway is like walking through a national heritage site. Depending on where you get off,you'll receive a brief course in architectural movements and face colorful glass windows, marble columns, gilded  mosaics and painted scenes from Russian history. "These extraordinarily beautiful places are unlike any metro station I've ever seen," says Vancouver-based photographer David Burdeny. When Burdeny, who himself has a master's degree in architecture, first found out about Moscow's metro stations, he was struck by the work of art. In all, he has photographed 20 of the most beautiful stations. Burdeny had originally planned to focus on Russian stations more generally, taking photos of examples in both St. Petersburg and Moscow. "But when I saw the stations in Moscow, they just completely blew away the St. Petersburg ones,"he says. Shooting in the subway sounds simple, but it is not without challenges. For one thing, Burdeny had to figure out a way to access them between 12:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., when the stations were closed. In the end, he settled on Arbatskaya Metro Station, whose vaulted   arches he found the most beautiful. But it also represented a challenge he was not sure he was able to overcome: conveying the hugeness of the spaces. The Arbatskaya platform, for example, stretches 820 feet."Some of the arches are quite long," he says. "When you enter them, they' re just so completely grand." We can learn from the text that David Burdeny  _  .
is a world-famous architect is studying Russian history took the subway to and from work took photos of Moscow subway stations