TsUM

Kazan’s TsUM (Central Department Store) is a large shopping complex in the historic center of the city, one of the recognizable symbols of the Soviet era in Kazan’s cityscape. The building on Moskovskaya Street combines the function of the republic’s main department store with the appearance of late-Soviet modernism. Over nearly a century of history, the institution has repeatedly changed its address and profile, remaining one of the most prominent commercial buildings in Tatarstan.

On 18 October 1940, an order of the USSR People’s Commissariat of Trade established a Kazan institution with the profile of a department store. The sales floor opened to shoppers on 11 November 1940, at 13 Bauman Street. Two decades later, in 1963, the store moved to another building — a five-story structure at 2 Kuibyshev Street (now Pushkin Street) — where it operated until the late 1970s. Design work on a new, third building, on Kirov Street (now Moskovskaya Street), began in 1969 under architects from Tatinvestgrazhdanproekt led by Svetlana Galanina; the authors of the standard design, reworked by local specialists, were credited as S. Nikulin, Yu. Omelchenko, and A. Kazakov.

The building at 2 Moskovskaya Street opened its doors on 19 December 1977 and became an example of late-1970s Soviet modernism. The architects abandoned decorative excess in favor of strict geometric forms — the round façade elements were nicknamed “omegas” among professionals for their resemblance to the Greek letter omega. The sales floor area exceeded ten thousand square meters, with roughly thirteen thousand allotted to warehouses, plus a separate restaurant and a cafeteria seating 230. This was also where Kazan’s first escalators appeared.

The escalators did not run continuously: the mechanisms operated from the opening until the mid-1980s, then stood idle for nearly two decades before being restarted only in 2002. In 2007–2008 the complex underwent reconstruction: a new building was erected beside the existing one, retail space grew to 17,000 square meters, and total floor area reached 32,700 square meters. The institution remained the republic’s largest department store and one of the main landmarks of the city center for decades.

In the spring of 2026, after another large-scale reconstruction, the complex reopened under a new name — the Center for Unique Craftsmanship — while keeping the familiar abbreviation TsUM. Total floor area grew to 52,800 square meters thanks to an extension built on the site of the former loading zone. The designers deliberately restored the façade’s appearance as originally conceived back in 1969. The building’s profile changed as well: instead of a department store, it now houses folk-craft workshops, spaces for master classes, and visitor leisure areas.

More than 75 artisans have applied to set up studios in the renovated complex, with the first three years of rent waived for them. Today the building on Moskovskaya Street remains a prominent architectural dominant of central Kazan — a monument of late-Soviet modernist construction that has found new life as a venue for preserving traditional crafts and for residents’ cultural leisure.