Apraksin Dvor Market

Apraksin Dvor is a historic trading complex in the block bounded by Sadovaya Street, the Fontanka, Lomonosov Street and the lane of the same name; it is one of the largest markets in old St Petersburg. The 14-hectare territory comprises 57 buildings with a total floor area of around 170,000 square metres and is still divided into two historical parts — Apraksin Dvor and Shchukin Dvor, named after the former owners of the land.

In 1734 Empress Anna Ioannovna granted the plot along the Fontanka to chamberlain Fyodor Apraksin for stone development, and the neighbouring plot eventually passed to the merchant Ivan Shchukin. The place became a genuine trading centre in 1782, when the old Bolshoi Morskoi Market burned down and its traders settled here — commercial life has continued uninterrupted ever since. In 1833 Nicholas I ordered the two courtyards to be united, and in 1841–1842 the city's first covered passage — a row of stone shops under a single glass roof — was built on the site of Shchukin Dvor.

The great fire of May 1862 destroyed almost all the wooden buildings and part of the stone ones: losses exceeded 60 million roubles, more than twenty thousand traders were left without a livelihood, and the event had a notable influence on the domestic policy of Alexander II. The complex was rebuilt in stone to designs by the architects Girolamo Corsini (Apraksin Dvor) and Alexander Krakau (Shchukin Dvor); the frontage on Sadovaya Street was named after the imperial couple — the Alexandrovskaya and Mariinskaya lines — with façades in the spirit of the Italian and French Renaissance.

By the early 20th century Apraksin Dvor, with several hundred shops, was called Europe's largest centre of wholesale trade — merchants came here from Yaroslavl province to trade fruit, tea, wine and fish from all over the world. Another serious fire occurred in 1914, though the damage was less than half a century earlier. After the revolution the market fell into decline, and in Soviet times the territory was used mainly as warehouses; in the 1960s some of the historic buildings were demolished to make way for the House of the Press.

In the post-Soviet years Apraksin Dvor turned into the city's largest clothing market, known as "Aprashka", but acquired a reputation as a crime-ridden place full of counterfeit goods. From the 2000s onward the authorities repeatedly announced competitions for the reconstruction of the complex — involving structures linked to Oleg Deripaska and the architectural firm Wilkinson Eyre, and later other designers — yet no large-scale project was ever carried out.

Today most of the buildings hold the status of cultural heritage sites, but many are in poor condition, part of the territory stands empty, and in surveys residents name the market itself as one of the city's least-loved places. Nevertheless, Apraksin Dvor remains a working trading complex and a monument to the history of St Petersburg commerce.