At 9:30 a.m., take a quick stroll around the neighborhood, known as Ostozhenka. This is the city's new Golden Mile and is rapidly filling with swank housing for newly affluent Kremlin types. At 10 a.m., hit the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, a five-minute walk from the cathedral (12 Volkhonka; museum.ru/gmii/defengl.htm).

There are two reasons to visit, and they should take only an hour. First is the gold treasures from ancient Troy that Russia stole from Germany in 1945 and kept hidden for half a century, until admitting it had them in the late 1990s. (Germany wants the horde back; Russia won't hear of it.) Second is a collection of life-size replicas of the world's best art, as determined by Moscow State University. The university decided a century ago that Russian students who can't afford to travel to see the world's best art ought to be exposed to it anyway, so it replicated, with painstaking exactitude, 750 of what it considers to be the finest sculptural and architectural works from ancient times through the Renaissance. As you stroll past parts of the Athenian Parthenon, Assyrian palaces, and medieval German churches, you'll see everything from an Egyptian statue of the pharaoh Chefren to the British Museum's Babylonian friezes, the Louvre's Venus de Milo, and the Accademia's nine-foot-tall David, by Michelangelo. It's a real trip.

Getting from the Pushkin to the Tretyakov Gallery by metro takes too long on a Sunday morning, so hail a gypsy cab (but not without a guide!). The Tretyakov (10 Lavrushinskiy; tretyakovgallery.ru) is arguably the world's best collection of Russian art and contains paintings that are touchstones of popular culture. By the time you have lunch at the museum café, it will be 2 p.m. or so. How you choose to spend your final afternoon in Moscow should depend on your particular interests. Are you a Russian literature fan? Tolstoy's city house is an interesting window into how the nineteenth-century intelligentsia lived (21 Lva Tolstovo; tolstoymuseum.ru). Are you a vodka aficionado? Exeter International can arrange a vodka tasting, with traditional accompaniments, at the Petrov Vodkin restaurant, where you'll find more than 300 vodkas ($250 for up to four people). Need gifts for the kids? The Matryoshka Museum has an exquisite collection of unique handmade dolls. Many on display are actually for sale and cost less than the kitschy ones in tourist gift shops (7/1 Leontievsky Pereulok).

Spend your final night in Moscow at the Bolshoi Ballet, marveling at the perfection of every detail—from the curve of each ballerina's arm to the sparkle of her costume (Theatre Sq.; 7-495-250-7317; bolshoi.ru; best tickets, $120–$500). The historic Bolshoi Theater is under renovation until 2008, so performances are held next door at the New Stage and typically start at 7 p.m. If afterward you want to do as the New Russians do—which means spending like there's no tomorrow (since Russians watched their life savings evaporate in the late twentieth century, many don't see the point in saving for the future)—ask your hotel concierge to get you into a nightclub such as Diaghilev, where an evening will set you back at least $1,500 (3 Karetnyi Ryad, Bldg. 7), or dine in replicated Baroque splendor at Turandot (26/5 Tverskoy; 7-495-739-0011; entrées, $20–$50) or the Savoy Hotel (3/6 Rozhdestvenka; 7-495-620-8500; entrées, $25–$60).