🏛 Gostiny Dvor

Невский пр., 35

A huge 18th-century shopping complex with yellow arcade galleries along Nevsky.

Gostiny Dvor was conceived as the largest trading building in the Russian Empire; Rastrelli's design was approved in 1757.
It was built by Vallin de la Mothe, who kept Rastrelli's layout but dressed the building in early Neoclassical forms.
In the 1840s Gostiny Dvor was one of the first buildings in the city to get gas lighting.
People came not only to shop: they arranged dates and "accidental" matchmaking meetings here, and Krylov loved to stroll through.
In 1966 the department store was visited by around 300,000 shoppers a day.
Since 3 November 1967 the vestibule of Gostiny Dvor metro station has been built into the building.

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