🏛 Buddhist Datsan Gunzechoinei

Приморский пр., 91

A dark granite temple in the Tibetan style, with ornaments and prayer wheels at the entrance.

The temple was built from 1909 to 1915 on the initiative of Agvan Dorzhiev, the representative of the 13th Dalai Lama, who became its first abbot.
The design was made by N. M. Berezovsky and Gavriil Baranovsky, the author of the Eliseyev Emporium on Nevsky.
The first service was held here on 21 February 1913, for the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov.
The Buddha statue for the new temple was donated by King Rama VI of Siam.
The stained glass with the eight auspicious Buddhist symbols is linked to Nicholas Roerich, who sat on the building committee.
In the war the building housed a military radio station, whose antenna was raised into the sky on a balloon.
Daniil Kharms mentioned the "golden top of the Buddhist pagoda" in his novella The Old Woman (1939).
The temple was returned to Buddhists in 1990, and it has carried the name Gunzechoinei — "source of the teaching of the All-Compassionate" — since 1991.