RIGA APARTMENTS

Home About Riga Order Form View Of Old Town

Russian Women

Free Tour Video

Dating and personals sites directory

Fiancee Visa

express mail forwarding

PHONE CALLS TO RUSSIA

Russian Visas

Romance Tours

Directory of dating sites

Cupid dating directory

Gift and Flowers

Foreign Women

List of Hotels in: [ St. Petersburg ] [ Moscow ] [ Volgograd ] [ Veliky Novgorod ] [ Nizhny Novgorod ] [ Krasnodar ] [ Stavropol ] [ Omsk ] [ Samara ] [ Ufa ] [ Perm ]

[ More Info about City ]

The G.U.M.

The GUM

The rebirth of GUM -- the once dowdy, now fancy arcade on Red Square -- is a lesson in the cycles of Russian commerce.
Built on a site used for centuries by small-scale traders, the glass-ceilinged, three-tiered arcade opened in 1893 in the waning years of Russia's czars as the Superior Trading Arcade. Its carved cornices, arching pedestrian bridges and scrolled ironwork rivaled the best in Europe.
It was shut within months of the Bolshevik Revolution and fell quickly into disrepair and ideological limbo. Although it reopened for about nine years as the State Department Store -- known by its Russian acronym GUM -- Soviet dictator Josef Stalin closed the store again in 1931, using its pastel-painted corridors for offices and a government printing house.
Several times the government discussed tearing it down altogether to make more room for the phalanxes of tanks that rolled through Red Square on holidays.
In part because of the distractions of World War II, GUM survived. It reopened after Stalin's death in 1953, and became the butt of tourist jokes.

More information about Moscow: [ The Kremlin ] [ The Red Square Mausoleum ] [ The Tretyakov Gallery ] [ G.U.M. ] [ Bolshoi Imperial Theatre ] [ The Novodevichy Convent ]

Riga Apartments

7320 N Dreamy Draw Drive
Phoenix, Arizona 85020
(602) 553-8178
FAX (602) 468-1119

Contact Us

THIS PROGRAM IS THE SOLE PROPERTY OF RIGA APARTMENTS AND MAY NOT BE COPIED IN ANY WAY OR FORM WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM RIGA APARTMENTS.

Samara Hotels

Russian car rentals

Moscow Hotels

Saint Petersburg Hotel

Astoria Hotel

Pribaltiyskaya Hotel