Visit Yekaterinburg

Carved wooden houses of the Siberian merchants and Decembrist exiles, an hour from Lake Baikal.

Visit Saint Petersburg, Russia's imperial capital. See the Hermitage Museum (one of the world's largest art museums, housed in the Winter Palace with over 3 million items), walk along Nevsky Prospect (the city's main avenue with historic buildings and shops), explore the Peter and Paul Fortress (the original citadel and burial site of Russian tsars), and admire the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood (a 19th-century church with intricate mosaics and onion domes).

Visit Novosibirsk, Russia's third-largest city and the unofficial capital of Siberia. Explore the Novosibirsk Opera and Ballet Theatre (one of the largest opera houses in Russia, known for its grand architecture and performances), walk across the Ob River on the Kommunalny Bridge for panoramic views, and see the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (a historic Orthodox church built in the late 19th century). Don't miss the Novosibirsk Zoo, home to over 11,000 animals including rare species like the snow leopard.

The Kul Sharif mosque inside a Kremlin, the capital of Tatarstan where minarets and domes share a skyline.

Subtropical Black Sea beaches and the 2014 Winter Olympics venues in the Caucasus above.

The end of the Trans-Siberian, a hilly Pacific port with cable-stayed bridges and Korean-Russian food.

Russia's oldest city, the 11th-century St Sophia and the birch-bark letters of a medieval republic.

A Kremlin on the bluff where the Oka meets the Volga, and the longest cable car across a river in Europe.