The Circle Line is the fifth line of the Moscow Metro. Before the closure of the Big Circle Line, which took place at the end of 2022, it was the only circle line in all the metro systems of the former USSR. It connects most of the Moscow Metro lines (except Solntsevskaya, Big Circle, Butovskaya and Nekrasovskaya) and seven of the ten Moscow railway stations (except Rizhsky, Savyolovsky and Vostochny), thus reducing the load on them. At all stations on the line, passengers enter and exit carriages from the left side relative to the train's direction. On the diagrams, it is marked in brown and with the number Circle Line. There are 12 stations on the line (all transfer stations). The average daily passenger flow of all its stations in 2011 was 540 thousand people. Background The Circle Line was not included in the original plans for the Moscow Metro. Instead, it was planned to build "diametric" lines with transfers in the city center, but after the opening of the second stage of the metro in 1938, it turned out that the load on the transfer hubs in this case would be too great. After the Great Patriotic War, it was decided to relieve them with the help of the Circle Line. According to other sources, the design of the Smolenskaya station, opened in 1935, already included a transfer to the future station of the Circle Line: at that time, the Ring was routed entirely along the Garden Ring. In addition to radial lines, the Circle Line connected seven of the nine railway stations that existed in the capital at that time. Construction The first stage, opened in 1950, ran from Krymskaya Square to Kursky Station along the southern arc of the Garden Ring with stations at all the main squares: Kaluzhskaya (now Oktyabrskaya), Serpukhovskaya (now Dobryninskaya), Paveletskaya and Taganskaya. The second section of the ring, which opened in 1952, passed beyond the Garden Ring, connecting the largest transport hubs to the metro system: Komsomolskaya station (Kazansky, Leningradsky and Yaroslavsky railway stations), Prospekt Mira, Novoslobodskaya and Belorusskaya (Belorussky railway station). At that time, Rizhsky and Savelovsky railway stations were still not connected to the metro. The last stage in 1954 closed the ring, passing through Krasnaya Presnya (a depot for the line was also built there) and Kyiv railway station. The Ring Line turned out to be key to the further development of the Moscow Metro. Often, radial lines were built "from the ring", only later connecting with the central section. Currently, each of the twelve stations on the Circle Line is a transfer station (in 1954, when the Circle Line was closed, there were only six transfer stations; the last station on the line without a transfer, Novoslobodskaya, received a transfer to Mendeleevskaya in 1988). In the 1980s, a myth was created to attract tourists, according to which the Circle Line was included in the construction plan after I. V. Stalin, listening to a report on the development of the metro, put a mug of coffee with him on the map. This supposedly explains, among other things, the choice of brown to designate it - a trace of the mug remained.