The Passage
Located at number 48 on Nevksy Avenue, the Passage is a gallery. Its initial construction took place in 1846-1848. It was designed by architect Rudolf Zelyazevich. At the time the ground floor hosted store, the first floor had storage rooms and the second had apartments.
Architect Sergei Kazlov added a third floor during the reconstruction completed in 1901. The gallery then hosted 64 shops on a total area of 5,000 sq-m. It underwent another phase of work twenty years later.
The Passage became a national store in 1933 and was then privatized in 1992. In 2011, it was bought by an investment fund. The transaction has been estimated at 80 million dollars. According to the managers of the store about ten thousand visit it each day. In some ways it reminds of the GUM in Moscow.