Moskovsky Railway Station

On Nevsky Prospekt, where it opens onto Ploshchad Vosstaniya, stands the building of Moskovsky Station — the terminal of the Saint Petersburg-Glavny station and one of the city's five operating railway stations. Built in the mid-nineteenth century as the terminus of Russia's first major railway line, it has since changed its name several times but has invariably remained the city's gateway from the side of the Russian capital.

Nicholas I decided to link St Petersburg with Moscow by railway in 1842, and the engineers Pavel Melnikov and Nikolai Kraft were appointed to lead the construction. Alexander Bryullov, Nikolai Yefimov and Konstantin Ton were invited to a competition for the station buildings — Ton's design, in the spirit of the Italian Renaissance with elements of Old Russian architecture, won. The building was erected in 1844–1851 and became an almost mirror twin of the station built in Moscow to the same design at the same time. The first train departed from here for Kolpino as early as 1847, and through traffic along the entire line opened on 1 November 1851.

The building, round in plan, stretches along Ploshchad Vosstaniya, and its façade, with a low colonnade, reproduces the motifs of Western European town halls — the central part is crowned by a clock tower marking the direction of the main entrance. An innovative solution for its time was the metal train shed over the tracks and platforms, with open triangular trusses, which had had no precedent in the architecture of such buildings in the empire. In the 1960s, to a design by the architect Viktor Kuznetsov, the station was reconstructed and a new wing with the metro station vestibule was added to the right wing, and in 1967 the spacious "Hall of Light" opened, increasing the station's area by almost three thousand square metres.

The station was renamed several times along with the city and the railway: Nikolaevsky, then Oktyabrsky from 1923, and Moskovsky from 1930. On 10 June 1931 the USSR's first named express train, the "Red Arrow", departed from here. The bust of Vladimir Lenin installed in the "Hall of Light" in the 1950s was replaced in 1993 by a bust of Peter I, the work of the sculptors Albert Charkin and Vladimir Olenev.

In the early 2000s the building was restored and fitted with a modern ticket-control system, and some of the underground passages were done away with, while the exit to the metro station was retained. The station building and the office building of the Nikolaev Railway are included in the register of cultural heritage sites of the peoples of Russia.

Today Moskovsky Station remains one of St Petersburg's busiest transport hubs and the starting point of high-speed trains to Moscow. Ton's building, having preserved its historic appearance, continues to shape the architectural image of Ploshchad Vosstaniya and remains a symbol of the city's railway history.