The Passage (Russian : Пассаж, romanized: Passazh), from the French word passage, [1] is an élite department store on Nevsky Avenue in Saint Petersburg, Russia, which was founded in 1848. The Passage premises have long had associations with the entertainment industry and houses the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre.
The site where the Passage sprawls had been devoted to trade since the city's foundation in the early 18th century. It had been occupied by various shops and warehouses (Little Gostiny Dvor, Schukin Dvor, Apraksin Dvor) until 1846, when Count Essen-Stenbock-Fermor acquired the grounds to build an elite shopping mall for the highest echelons of the Russian nobility and bourgeoisie.
The name came from a vast gallery between Nevsky Avenue and Italianskaya Street which provided the main passage through the mall. The gallery was covered over by an arching glass and steel roof, thus giving it a claim to being one of the world's first shopping malls, along with Passage du Caire in Paris (1798) Burlington Arcade in London, Galerie Vivienne in Paris (1823) and Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert in Brussels.
The three-storey building of the Passage opened its doors to consumers on May 9, 1848. It was one of the first structures in Russia to employ gas for lighting. Another innovation was an underground floor, where an electric station would be installed in 1900. Although the store specialized in jewellery, expensive clothes and other luxury goods, crowds of common people flocked to see the most fashionable shop of the Russian Empire. A fee of 50 kopecks had to be introduced in order to limit admissions.
Stenbock-Fermor conceived of the Passage as more than a mere shopping mall, but also as a cultural and social centre for the people of St Petersburg. The edifice contained coffee-houses, confectioneries, panorama installations, an anatomical museum, a wax museum, and even a small zoo, described by Dostoyevsky in his extravaganza "The Crocodile, or Passage through the Passage". The concert hall became renowned as a setting for literary readings attended by the likes of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Taras Shevchenko.
In 1897 the ownership of the Passage passed from Stenbock-Fermor's heirs to Princess Nadezhda Boryatinsky. A great fire in 1898 necessitated a major renovation, funded by the Crédit Lyonnais, a bank which leased a large portion of the store as its offices. In 1900, the building was revamped, with the addition of a further storey, and refaced in Radom sandstone. The new owner transformed the former concert hall into a theatre employing Vera Komissarzhevskaya as its artistic director. To draw even more consumers to the store, the Soleille, one of the largest cinemas in the Russian capital, was opened in the complex in 1908.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the following several years of disorder, the store was reopened as the Passage Supermarket in 1922. It continued in this capacity until 1933, when the municipal authorities declared the Passage a "model department store", the only one in Leningrad (as the former St Petersburg was then known) and one of only three such stores in the Soviet Union. The renovated "palace of Soviet trade" (as the media touted it) opened in 1934 and offered about 30,000 types of goods, all manufactured in the USSR. The Children's World section became especially popular with the inhabitants of Leningrad.
The Passage remained a showcase of the Soviet industry until the onset of World War II. During the Siege of Leningrad, the shop was closed but the majority of employees chose to remain day and night. The building's glass roof was subjected to intensive bombing, but amazingly the interior sustained little damage. The Passage was restored and reopened for business in 1947. Since 1961, this historic department store has been specializing in goods for women.
The Passage is now privately owned by employees and shareholders. Updates and renovations throughout the entire building were done to meet modern international standards. Expanded showrooms welcomed more customers. Passage established relations with new trade and business partners, such as Escada, and other international department stores. One of the first upscale food markets in Russia, with a wide variety of international produce, opened in the basement. New restaurant opened on the upper level with the panoramic view of the Nevsky Prospect.
Jensen Group (real estate investment and development company based in Saint-Petersburg, Russia) acquired Nevsky Passage from VTB Bank in September 2011. (Analysts valued the amount of transaction at $80mln.)
An arcade is a succession of contiguous arches, with each arch supported by a colonnade of columns or piers. Exterior arcades are designed to provide a sheltered walkway for pedestrians. The walkway may be lined with retail stores. An arcade may feature arches on both sides of the walkway. Alternatively, a blind arcade superimposes arcading against a solid wall. Blind arcades are a feature of Romanesque architecture that influenced Gothic architecture. In the Gothic architectural tradition, the arcade can be located in the interior, in the lowest part of the wall of the nave, supporting the triforium and the clerestory in a cathedral, or on the exterior, in which they are usually part of the walkways that surround the courtyard and cloisters.
A shopping center or shopping centre or mall, also called a shopping complex, shopping arcade, shopping plaza or galleria, is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof.
GUM is the main department store in many cities of the former Soviet Union, known as State Department Store during the Soviet era. Similarly named stores operated in some Soviet republics and in post-Soviet states.
Nevsky Prospect is a main street located in the federal city of St. Petersburg in Russia. Its name comes from the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, the monastery which stands at the eastern end of the street, and which commemorates the Russian hero Prince Saint Alexander Nevsky (1221–1263). Following his founding of Saint Petersburg in 1703, Tsar Peter I planned the course of the street as the beginning of the road to Novgorod and Moscow. The avenue runs from the Admiralty in the west to the Moscow Railway Station and, after veering slightly southwards at Vosstaniya Square, to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Great Gostiny Dvor is a vast department store on Nevsky Avenue in St Petersburg.
Central Saint Petersburg is the central and the leading part of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It looks nothing like the downtown district of a typical major city, and has no skyscrapers. The Central Business District's main borders are Neva River to the north and west, and the Fontanka River to the south and east, but the downtown includes areas outside.
Vosstaniya Square, before 1918 Znamenskaya Square, is a major square in the Central Business District of Saint Petersburg, Russia. The square lies at the crossing of Nevsky Prospekt, Ligovsky Prospekt, Vosstaniya Street and Goncharnaya Street, in front of the Moskovsky Rail Terminal, which is the northern terminus of the line connecting the city with Moscow. Administratively, the Vosstaniya Square falls under the authority of the Tsentralny District.
Apraksin Yard is a 14 hectares market and retail block in Saint Petersburg, Russia, currently under a massive long-term renovation project. The buildings of Apraksin Dvor nestle between Sadovaya Street and the Fontanka River, just southwest of the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
Gostiny Dvor is a station on the Nevsko–Vasileostrovskaya Line of the Saint Petersburg Metro. It was designed by architect C.G. Mayofis, E.S. Belyat, A.K. Andreyev, Ya.E. Moskalenko and C.P Schyukin and opened on November 3, 1967. It has two exits - one at the intersection between the Griboyedov Canal and Nevsky Prospect and another inside the northern side of the Gostinyi Dvor mall. The latter exit has an entrance that allows the commuters to enter the mall directly. The station also linked to the Nevsky Prospekt metro station via a transfer corridor and a set of escalators. The station is the busiest station on the line and one of the busiest stations in the entire St. Petersburg Metro.
Lakhta is a historical area in Lakhta-Olgino Municipal Okrug of St. Petersburg, Russia, situated west of Lake Lakhta. It was formerly owned by Peter the Great, Count Grigory Orlov, and Count Stenbock-Fermor. The Lakhta railway station of the Primorsky Railway connects Lakhta to Central Saint Petersburg. The historical area of Olgino lies south-west of Lakhta.
Chichrerin House was a historical landmark building located at Nevsky Prospekt 15 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is also known as Kosikovsky House, Elisseeff House and Barrikada cinema theater.
2 Architect Rossi Street is a building in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is located at the corner of Ostrovsky Square and Architect Rossi Street, which is named for the Italian architect Carlo Rossi who spent his working life in Russia.
Saint Petersburg was constructed in 1703. The first hotel was built in 1719 on a place of Chicherin House in a Nevsky Prospekt 15. It was a Gostiny Dvor, a gallery where merchants lived, stored the goods and traded in them.
Lensovet Theatre, officially Saint Petersburg State Academic Lensoviet Theatre, also known as Lensovet Academic Theatre and Lensoviet Theatre, is a theatre and theatrical troupe in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The Komissarzhevskaya Theatre is a theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is named after Vera Komissarzhevskaya.
DLT is a department store in Saint Petersburg, Russia, which as of mid-2012 is set to reopen after a major renovation as a branch of the TsUM chain. DLT is located on Bolshaya Konyushennaya street 21–23 just north of Nevsky Prospekt.
Gostinyi dvor is a historic Russian term for an indoor market or shopping centre. It is translated from Russian either as "guest court" or "merchant yard", although both translations are inadequate. These structures originated as collections of small shops where merchants from other cities could, at designated times, come to sell their wares. Some such structures, constructed in every large Russian town during the first decades of the 19th century, are fine examples of Neoclassical architecture.
Jensen Group is an investment company of the Russian real estate market. All of the company's efforts are focused on investments in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region.
Saint Petersburg – second-largest city in Russia. An important Russian port on the Baltic Sea, it has the status of a federal subject. Its name was changed to "Petrograd" in 1914, then to "Leningrad" in 1924, and back to Saint Petersburg in 1991.
Coordinates: 59°56′08″N30°20′04″E / 59.935462°N 30.334454°E