Trade on the territory of modern GUM has been carried out since the 15th century. The historical name of the complex is Upper Trading Rows. Initially, Nikolskaya, Ilyinka and Varvarka divided all trade opposite the Kremlin into Upper, Middle and Lower rows. Each block inside was divided into rows, according to the nature of the goods: Bell, Caftan, etc. In the 15th–16th centuries. trade took place in wooden shops under Boris Godunov in 1596–1598. Stone buildings also appeared, but despite frequent fires, the replacement of wood with stone proceeded very slowly. In the 1780s. the front part of the Upper Rows from the Red Square side received a second floor and an arched facade with a ten-column portico. A project for a complete reconstruction of the complex was developed, but was never fully implemented.

In the fire of 1812 the rows were completely burned out, but by 1815 a new complex was built according to the project, again classic: with a portico and dome. The side parts in the shape of the letter “G”, overlooking Nikolskaya and Varvarka, received the popular nickname “verbs”. The building was decorated with bas-reliefs in the form of female figures carrying laurel wreaths, and the coat of arms of Moscow was placed on the main portico on the side of the square. There were 32 stone buildings in total. But this complex also fell into disrepair: the passages, littered with goods, turned into narrow slums, the premises were poorly lit and - to avoid fires - were not heated. In 1887, the complex was closed; temporary shops consisting of 14 iron buildings were set up right on Red Square. The specially created “Joint Stock Company of the Upper Trading Rows on Red Square in Moscow” held a competition in which the project won. The work was carried out in 1890–1893. On December 2, 1893, the complex was inaugurated.

Although the architect moved away from the classicist style in favor of pseudo-Russian, the structure of the complex remained the same: lines, passages and wide storefront windows. The elongated “terem” roofs and tents with spiers above the main entrance are in harmony with the Kremlin towers. Thanks to the engineers and A.F. Loleita passages (“rows”) received glazed roofs. The building had its own power plant, which illuminated both the rows and Red Square, a water supply system and an artesian well. In total there were 1,200 shops and three meeting halls. In 1897, a cinema was created in one of them.

After the revolution, apartments of famous government figures (for example, People's Commissar of Food Tsyurupa) and a number of offices were located here. In the 1930s. there were projects for demolition of the building and construction multi-story building People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry, but then they were abandoned. Trade returned in 1952–1953: the rows were restored and received a new name - the State Department Store (GUM). Nowadays GUM does not have state status, but the established name has been retained. It has become an integral symbol of Red Square. The fate of the Upper ranks remained connected with trade. The Middle ranks, which came under the control of the military, are now awaiting a decision on their fate, and the Lower ranks were completely lost.

Once the largest arcade in Europe - the Upper Trading Rows, or modern GUM. The neo-Russian style building was built on a historical trading site at the end of the 19th century in record time - three years. The architects were given only three months to develop the project. The main condition is the preservation of the architectural harmony of the main Moscow square, because the shopping arcade was face to face with the ancient Kremlin building. We invite you to remember 10 facts about the architectural monument with Natalia Letnikova.

Upper shopping arcades. In the center of the capital, trade was carried out between Ilyinka and Nikolskaya three and four hundred years ago. The first stone shopping arcades were built under Boris Godunov. Right along Vetoshny Lane. Under Catherine II, the architect Giacomo Quarenghi developed a project for the Upper Trading Rows in the classicist style. The work was completed after the fire of 1812 by Osip Bove. Barely half a century had passed - the shopping complex required reconstruction. The shopkeepers were unable to reach an agreement with the city authorities. As a result, the building was declared unsafe and a competition was announced for the construction of a new one.

All-Russian competition. Rationality, economy, architectural harmony with the historical landscape. Architects' projects submitted to the competition had to meet at least three requirements. 23 architects from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Odessa and even Berlin presented their vision of a new building on Moscow’s main square. The projects were placed in three halls of the Historical Museum. By the way, the new building should also be in harmony with the bright red stone tower - the Historical Museum, made in the neo-Russian style.

"To the Moscow merchants". Academy of Arts, Construction Department of the Provincial Board, Technical Committee, Architectural and Art Societies. The project was chosen through common efforts - by a special commission. The first prize of six thousand rubles was awarded to the work under the motto “Moscow Merchants” - St. Petersburg architect Alexander Pomerantsev. The second prize went to the work of Roman Klein, the future author of the Museum of Fine Arts, the third - to the Austrian August Weber, one of the authors of the building of the Polytechnic Museum. Pomerantsev's project was personally approved by Alexander III.

From temples to shopping arcade. By the time of the competition, architect Alexander Pomerantsev had only managed to complete the design of the Temple-monument to Alexander Nevsky in Sofia, commissioned by the Bulgarian prince, to build a wooden church in Fedoskino and a hotel in Rostov-on-Don. Subsequently, Pomerantsev took the post of chief architect of the 1986 All-Russian Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod. Together with Viktor Vasnetsov, he built the second largest after the Cathedral of Christ the Savior - the Moscow Cathedral in the name of Alexander Nevsky, destroyed in 1952.

“City within a City” by Alexander Pomerantsev. Sixteen separate buildings with glassed streets between them, arcades and galleries. A large central tower with a main entrance, gates and turrets. The new building on Red Square looked solemn and harmoniously fit into the historical landscape. The upper shopping arcade has become the largest arcade in Europe - in terms of the length of the galleries and the area of ​​the “glass sky”. Above the entrances to GUM there were icons with especially revered saints: images of Nicholas the Wonderworker, the Savior Not Made by Hands, Elijah the Prophet, Sergius of Radonezh.

The glass sky of the “man factory”. Inventor and innovator Vladimir Shukhov, included in the hundred outstanding engineers of all time, used an innovative approach when constructing the roof of the Upper Trading Rows: arched structures with cable ties, which made it possible to reduce the weight of the roof. Shukhov hid the eight-petal dome behind the façade of the building. The abundance of glass gives the building a feeling of lightness, although 800 tons of metal were spent on the construction of the floors. The openwork steel frame made of metal rods has become a real work of art.

Progress in Old Russian style. The most high-tech Moscow building of its time. Artesian well, heating and ventilation systems, sewerage, even your own snow machine and mini Railway for transportation of goods. Gas lighting in the city and its own power plant in the shopping arcades. From shops to salons. Shopping arcades became not only a place of purchase and sale, but also a prototype of a business center. On the third floor there are representative offices of trading companies, and in the basement there are wholesale stores.

Trading in the Parisian spirit. The fixed price for goods in Russia was first introduced in the Upper Trading Rows. The experience of the owner of the Le Bon Marche store, Aristide Boucicault, who set price tags and invented sales back in the mid-19th century in France, has taken root in Russian trade. In the Moscow Trading Rows, sales - "cheap" items - were very popular among the townspeople. The rows became a kind of exhibition of the achievements of the capitalist economy: Kalashnikov watches, the Abrikosovs' confectionery shop, Brocard's perfumery. In a word, pre-revolutionary boutiques of Russia. Mayakovsky. “To GUM, Komsomol members, to GUM, workers’ faculty members!”- the poet called. But, having already become the Main Department Store, the Upper Trading Rows were more than once on the verge of demolition. In the mid-30s of the twentieth century, they wanted to build a huge People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry on Red Square - on the site of GUM. But this plan remained on paper, as did the intention in 1947 to erect a monument on this site in memory of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Since 1953, GUM has again become a shopping arcade and one of the symbols of the city.

History of GUM

The Upper Trading Rows were opened on December 2, 1893. This was an exceptional project for Moscow and for Russia - at that time it was the largest arcade in Europe.

Passages - covered shopping streets - were invented to be built in early XIX century in Paris after the Napoleonic wars, inspired by the covered bazaars of the Arab East (the oldest of them, Passage du Caire, built in 1799). But these were just covered shopping streets; they began to gather in department stores only in the second half of the century. The closest analogue of GUM is the Victor Emmanuel Gallery in Milan (1877), but our Moscow arcade is one and a half times larger, and in the Milan arcade they do not sell on the upper floors - there are no famous GUM bridges there.

The Upper Trading Rows were deliberately made as a symbol of New Moscow. They were built on the traditional place of Moscow trading, there were endless shops, “half-shops”, “quarter-shops”, and although the rows overlooked Red Square with the proud classicist facade of Osip Bove, inside it vividly resembled the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul or Damascus.

After the reforms of Alexander II, Moscow was a place of proud Russian merchants, who at that moment whimsically combined devout conservatism in the spirit of “autocracy, Orthodoxy, nationality” with openness to technical progress and new ideas of capitalism. New Rows was supposed to become the most fashionable and technically advanced European department store, but in the “Russian style”.

In February 1889, a competition was held for the design of the Rows, which was won by Alexander Pomerantsev, Roman Klein, who took second place, then built the Middle Trading Rows. Now it seems fantastic, but 4 years later - after the demolition of the old rows, after archaeological excavations, the finds from which were transferred to the Historical Museum - the Rows were opened. With full finishing, with the glass skies of Vladimir Shukhov, with its own power plant, artesian well, with wholesale trade in the basement floors, with telegraph offices, banks, restaurants, hairdressers, showrooms, ateliers - the only thing without its own doors.

According to the original design by Alexander Pomerantsev, the Upper Trading Rows consisted of 16 large separate buildings with glass-covered streets between them. It was a whole city, an ideal city of Russian commercial capitalism: silk and brocade fabrics of the Sapozhnikov brothers (6 Grand Prix at World Exhibitions), Mikhail Kalashnikov’s watches (Leo Tolstoy and Pyotr Tchaikovsky bought their Patek Philippe from him), the Abrikosovs’ confectionery (suppliers to the imperial court with the right to print the national emblem on their boxes), Brocard perfumery (also a supplier to the imperial court. And also an official supplier to the Spanish royal court) and so on. However, on the upper floors of the lines, goods were much cheaper, and the huge two-tier basement was used for wholesale trade (it was illuminated through glass lanterns in the floor).

In 1917, trade was closed, goods were requisitioned, and the People's Commissariat of Food of Alexander Dmitrievich Tsyurupa was located here, who carried out the policy of “food dictatorship” from here. In Rows there is a warehouse requisitioned by food detachments and a canteen for fellow soldiers.

In 1922, Vladimir Lenin decided that the policy of “war communism” would not allow the communists to remain in power, and announced the NEP - “New Economic Policy”. But first he decided to try it in the Upper Trading Rows and on December 1, 1921 he signed the “Regulations on the State Department Store (GUM).” We don’t feel a special flavor in this word, it has become familiar to us, and yet it is one of the few words of the 20s that survived in the Russian language, something like the Red Army, Rabkrin, Consumer Cooperation. All of them died as unnecessary - except for GUM. All of Moscow was plastered with GUM advertisements, posters of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Alexander Rodchenko - GUM became a symbol of the NEP.

Stalin closed GUM in 1930, ministries and departments moved in here, the first line was completely closed to entry, Beria’s office was located here. Some trade continued, Torgsin and a consignment store selling the property of enemies of the people operated near the fountain, a grocery store overlooked Nikolskaya, but in general GUM ceased to exist.

Stalin twice - in 1935 and in 1947 - was going to demolish GUM, government decrees were issued twice, but nothing came of it. He died on March 5, 1953. Over his coffin, his successor Georgy Malenkov proclaimed that Comrade Stalin bequeathed to us to maintain peace between nations, put forward the idea of ​​​​long-term coexistence of the two systems and a reduction in international tension. The military budget was halved, intensive development began Agriculture and light industry - everything that later became known as Nikita Khrushchev’s “New Deal”. But first they decided to try in GUM - it was reconstructed and opened to the public on December 24, 1953. On December 23, Lavrentiy Beria was shot, newspapers reported this on the same day. GUM became a symbol of the thaw.

GUM has a unique destiny - it opened when Russia was turning towards people, normal city life, even happiness. Fashion in GUM, a showroom, records in GUM, ice cream in GUM - all of this has become Moscow symbols. And all this disappeared when we turned in a different direction.

GUM today

Today GUM lives as it was once intended - the ideal trading city of Moscow, as if it had lived 120 years of its life without losses or disasters. Since 2007, the fountain in the center of GUM has once again delighted visitors - a legendary structure, captured both in official chronicles of the 20th century and in millions of private photographs (today the sound of a camera shutter sounds here approximately once every three seconds).

The legendary cinema hall, which went down in the history of Russian cinema, has been restored. Implemented on the external façade unique project illumination. Since 2006, the GUM Skating Rink has been opened on Red Square, which immediately gained fame as the capital’s brightest ice rink. We revived the traditions of winter festivities on Red Square, for which Moscow was famous in the 19th century, but we also took the bright and happy things that were in the 20th century.

Gastronome No. 1, which was once created by Anastas Mikoyan as a practical supplement to his “Book on Tasty and Healthy Food,” is again working in GUM. Both in the design, in the clothes of the sellers, and even in the presence in the assortment of some classic goods of the Soviet era (for example, “Three Elephants” tea), Gastronom No. 1 takes us back to the 1950s-60s, although this, of course, is a game. At its core, this is a store that can satisfy the gastronomic whims of today's most demanding consumer.

The Festivalnoe café and Canteen No. 57 are designed in the same Soviet style. The café is named after the Festival of Youth and Students, which was held in Moscow in 1957 and brought together 34,000 people from 131 countries. Drawings and slogans in several languages ​​posted on the walls remind of this event.

Canteen No. 57 is a classic self-service line, the idea of ​​which Mikoyan spotted in America in 1936, but was able to implement only during the Thaw era. True, the food is different: now there is good Russian and European cuisine, and not a “hamburger,” as Mikoyan called it, that is, not a “Mikoyan cutlet,” as the Soviet people called it.

GUM is not just a store where you can buy almost everything. This is an entire shopping district, in which there is a pharmacy, a bank branch, and a flower shop... This is an architectural monument. This is a comfortable recreation area with restaurants and cafes. It is an art gallery and cultural events venue. This is an integral part of Russian history. It's a symbol of Moscow, and it's the closest place to the Kremlin where you can feel like you're in Europe.

Text: Grigory Revzin

GUM (Russia) - description, history, location. Exact address, phone number, website. Tourist reviews, photos and videos.

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GUM is one of the most famous department stores not only in Russia, but throughout the entire post-Soviet space. This is not only a fashionable shopping and entertainment complex, it is a real art object, and we are talking about both the internal content of GUM and its external appearance. The building, made in pseudo-Russian style, has become as much a symbol of Russia as St. Basil's Cathedral or the Kremlin.

The GUM building, designed in pseudo-Russian style, has become one of the symbols of Russia and Moscow.

In the 30s, GUM was going to be demolished and the building of the People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry built in its place, but that didn't work out.

Despite the fact that the shopping arcades often burned even before the construction of the GUM building, the fire of 1812 bypassed the market, which still surprises historians.

GUM today

Modern GUM is not only a building of stunning architectural beauty, but also dozens of luxury and premium boutiques. Flagship stores of brands such as Manolo Blanik, Bosco Fresh, Furla and others are located here.

In addition to shops, there is a cinema, 3 halls in total, the largest of which has only 70 seats, which creates a feeling of intimacy. Every year, a skating rink is opened in GUM, where star skaters have appeared on the ice more than once, and the legendary fountain, the same age as this building, has been restored.

GUM is sensitive to its history, so much attention is paid to Soviet style. For example, there is the Gastronom No. 1 store, decorated in the style of Moscow in the 50s, as well as Stolovaya No. 57, where you can have a nostalgic snack on sausage with green peas.

The historic toilet room on the ground floor receives special attention from guests. It recreates the interior of the pre-revolutionary era, and you can visit it for 150 RUB. For 500 RUB you can take a shower (the price includes a robe, towel and slippers).

Address of the Main Department Store (GUM): Moscow, Krasnaya sq., 3, metro: “Okhotny Ryad”, “Revolution Square”, “Teatralnaya”.
Phone number of the Main Department Store: (495) 788-43-43.
Main department store open every day from 10.00 to 22.00.
Website of the Main Department Store: http://www.gum.ru

Main department store (GUM)(until 1953 Upper Trading Rows) - a large shopping complex in the center of Moscow and one of the largest in Europe, occupies an entire block and faces Red Square with its main façade, and is an architectural monument of federal significance.

Among the trading establishments of Russia at the end of the 19th century, the Upper Trading Rows occupied a special place.

This largest shopping passage played an important role in the economic life of the country. Passage (from French - passage, passage) is a type of commercial or business building in which shops or offices are located in tiers along the sides of a wide passage with a glazed covering. The location of the shopping arcades in the very heart of Moscow, in the ancient center of Russian trade, predetermined their rich history.

Already in the 17th century, almost all retail and wholesale Moscow.

The place that is now occupied by GUM, Vetoshny Proezd and the opposite row of houses along it has long been lively shopping center cities.

The building of the Upper Trading Rows was built in 1890-1893 according to the design of the architect A. N. Pomerantsev and engineer V. G. Shukhov. The building is designed in pseudo-Russian style.

The building was located in the block between Red Square and Vetoshny Proezd along a radius: as documents of that time testify, the length of the facade facing Red Square was 116 fathoms, and that facing Vetoshny Proezd was 122 fathoms.

The grand opening of the Upper Trading Rows with the participation of the Governor General of Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna took place on December 2 (14), 1893.

The gigantic three-story structure, consisting of three longitudinal passages with deep basements, housed more than a thousand shops. The design of the passage floors is arched steel trusses with glazed sixteen-meter spans. In addition to the passages, the building has three large halls. In exterior decoration Finnish granite, Tarusa marble, sandstone were used.

In 1952-1953, the building was restored and became the State Department Store (short name - GUM). Currently, the shopping complex is not state-owned, but the name GUM is still used today along with the old name “Upper Trading Rows”.

Icon of the Holy Blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky on the facade of the GUM building.






Near the Upper Trading Rows building there are: