Museum of the History of the Merchants of St. Petersburg and Russia

This is a vast bazaar, the city's oldest shopping centre, and one of the first shopping arcades in the world. Dating to the mid-18th century. The name means "Merchant Yard", as its old role was to provide both shops and housing to merchants from far away. It sells almost everything from PlayStations to Saint Petersburg Vodka. On the north side is a decent store for second-hand photo equipment selling cameras and lenses (Nikon, Canon, Sigma etc.). The prices of goods are the highest in St.Petersburg. Sprawling for over one kilometer and embracing the area of 53,000 m², the indoor complex of more than 100 shops took twenty-eight years to construct. Building works commenced in 1757 to an elaborate design by Bartolomeo Rastrelli, but that subsequently was discarded in favour of a less expensive and more functional Neoclassical design submitted by Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe (1729–1800). The next century, Gostiny Dvor was continuously augmented, resulting in ten indoor streets and as many as 178 shops by the 20th century. By that time, the Gostiny Dvor had lost its popularity to the more fashionable Passage and New Passage on the Nevsky Prospekt nearby. During the post-World War II

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