The Passage

Passazh, Универмаг «Пассаж»

This is an elite department store that opened in 1848. The Passage premises have long been associated with the entertainment industry and remains home to the Komissarzhevskaya Theatre.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. The three-storey building opened 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. Count Essen-Stenbock-Fermor - the developer - 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. 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. In 1933, the municipal authorities declared the Passage a "model department store", the only one in Leningrad (former St Petersburg) 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. - Now privately owned by employees and shareholders.

• museum
• viewpoint
• history
• family
• coffee

Address

Nevsky Prospekt (Невский пр.),48

Getting there

: Nevsky Prospekt «Невский проспект»;: 3, 7, 22, 27.: 1, 5, 7, 10, 22

Hours

Mon-Sat 10:00-21:00, Sun 11:00-21:00

Website

passage.spb.ru (opens in a new tab)