Moscow: the Ugly Duckling Comes of Age by Rose Baring

On the table, gazpacho and a glass of Spanish white. Shading me from the incessant sunshine, the portico of a city-centre hotel. Ahead an underground shopping centre decorated at street level with fountains and to the left, the crenellated red brick walls of one of the world's great museum complexes. Where am I? Madrid? Zaragoza? No; Moscow. And why are you so surprised?

It bothers me more than most that Moscow should suffer from such an undeservedly appalling reputation. I lived here in the early 1990s writing a guidebook, and saw that beneath the cygnet's unattractive bum-fluff there was a swan waiting to emerge. Beneath the layers of dust and grime which blanketed the place lay street upon street of individual mansions, some with porticos, some with elaborate wings, each with its own character and history. Between and behind the vast Stalinist complexes lay exquisite baroque churches, leafy squares and the rickety wooden houses of the eighteenth century. And in the museums lay treasures from an empire, which at its peak covered one sixth of the earth's surface. It's a wonderful city, and now is the time to visit.

The 1990s were Moscow's Klondyke period. The city accounts for 80% of Russia's total economy and the dynamic, canny mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, used that affluence to dramatic aplomb. Not only has the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer reappeared on the skyline with gilded cupolas and all, but hundreds of individual buildings have been renovated. Where once I strained to see where one mansion began and another ended, now each declares its sovereignty with a fresh coat of paint. Children's playgrounds, formerly a dire warning, have all been rebuilt. Even the doors of the Historical Museum, which I assumed had been welded shut, now beckon to the tourists on Red Square. It's not where I would choose to do business, but it's a gem of a tourist city.

My idea of Moscow heaven is a gentle, breezy summer's day spent walking the length of the world's most idiosyncratic park, the Bulvar Ring. It's a narrow necklace of green, 20 metres wide and several miles long, which curves through the old city. It's as quintessentially Moscow as the Grand Canal is Venice, or Central Park New York.

Tourists are few and far between, and somehow this narrow lung seems to sum up the whole city, and much of Russia beyond. You see joggers and drunks, fishermen, buskers and pedigree dogs. There are statues of everyone from Pushkin to Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, museums devoted to actresses, Oriental art and revolution, monasteries, churches, shops selling central Asian textiles and cafes aplenty to rest your feet. As you amble along the city begins to make sense, and in places, between the trees, you glimpse the gleaming plumage of a swan.