Old St. Petersburg Stock Exchange (the Bourse)

The Stock Exchange building on the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island is one of the most recognisable architectural ensembles in Saint Petersburg, a monument of mature classicism from the early 19th century. Together with the two Rostral Columns in front of its façade, it organises the space of the cape, from which a panorama opens onto the Neva, the Peter and Paul Fortress and the Winter Palace. The building was erected as a commodity exchange, but over two centuries it has changed function several times, remaining all the while one of the city's chief urban landmarks.

The idea of improving the island's undeveloped cape took shape in 1767 with a plan for a horseshoe-shaped square. In the 1780s the architect Giacomo Quarenghi framed the future square with the building of the Academy of Sciences and a northern warehouse, and in 1783 began building an exchange in the Palladian style. Work stopped in 1787: the building, with its façade facing the Winter Palace, no longer suited the demands of the new era of urban planning. The project was handed to the Frenchman Jean-François Thomas de Thomon, who erected the building between 1805 and 1810; the war with Napoleon delayed the fitting-out, and the exchange opened only in 1816. The southern and northern warehouses and the customs house that completed the ensemble were built in 1826–1832 by the architect Ivan Lucchini.

Thomas de Thomon conceived the exchange as an ancient peripteral temple: the building is encircled by a Doric colonnade of forty-four columns, 11.35 metres tall, spaced noticeably wider than the classical canon prescribed, so that the colonnade reads as a continuation of the landscape rather than merely a support for the roof. The building stands on a granite stylobate with descents to the Neva, and in front of it stand the two Rostral Columns with allegories of Russian rivers at their bases. Spiral staircases run inside the columns up to viewing platforms with lamps that were once fed with hemp oil and later with gas. The sculptural groups in the attics were made by the master Joseph Camberlain, who worked in the city from 1806.

In 1913–1914 a reinforced-concrete vault was raised over the main hall to a design by the architects Marian Peretyatkovich and Fyodor Lidval, changing the appearance of the interior. After the revolution the building repeatedly changed its purpose: a sailors' club, a chamber of commerce, a labour exchange, and from 1930 premises of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Later the Central Naval Museum moved in, occupying the building for more than seven decades, right up until the collection was transferred to the Kryukov Barracks in 2010–2012.

In December 2013 the city authorities decided to hand the building over to the Hermitage. A Museum of Heraldry, Awards and the History of the Guards is being created here across three floors in five enfilades, covering the traditions of Russia, the Far East, Japan, China, the Muslim world, Turkey and Europe. By 2024 the restoration had entered its final stage.

The Stock Exchange building remains one of the chief architectural dominants of the Neva's banks and, together with the Rostral Columns, shapes the image of the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island familiar from countless depictions of Saint Petersburg. Having preserved the appearance conceived by Thomas de Thomon more than two centuries ago, it continues to serve the city — now as a museum space open to visitors.