I guess this is really great pride of Moscow and its residents - GUM, old and always exclusive department store near Red Square. You will like this view,especially its classical linear perspective.
State Universal Store or GUM (ГУМ, pronounced as goom, in full Государственный Универсальный Магазин, Gosudarstvennyi Universalnyi Magazin) is a common name for the main department store in many cities of the Soviet Union and some post-Soviet states. The most famous GUM is a large store in Kitai-gorod of Moscow, facing Red Square. Prior to the 1920s the place was known as the Upper Trading Rows.
The existing structure — defined by William Craft Brumfield as "a tribute both to Shukhov's design and to the technical proficiency of Russian architecture toward the end of the 19th century" — was built to replace the previous trading rows that had burnt down in 1825. The glass-roof designed makes the building unique. The roof, whose diameter is 14 meters, looks light, but it is a firm construction made of over 50,000 pods (about 819 tons) of metal. Illumination is provided by huge arched skylights of iron and glass, each weighing some 820 tons and containing in excess of 20,000 panes of glass. By the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the building contained some 1,200 stores. The facade is split into several horizontal tiers, lined with red Finnish granite, Tarusa marble, and limestone. Each arcade is on three levels, linked by walkways of reinforced concrete.
The ornate Neo-Russian facade of GUM, Moscow's "State Department Store", takes up almost the entire eastern side of Red Square. Built between 1890 and 1893 by Alexander Pomerantsev, the building features an interesting combination of elements of Russian medieval ecclesiastical architecture and an elegant steel framework and glass roof, reminiscent of the great turn of the century train stations of Paris and London. This modern 3-story arcade is the largest shop in Moscow and was built to replace the old hall of the Upper Trading Rows, which existed earlier on the same site but burnt down in 1825. The original hall contained some 1,200 separate shops and stalls and was one of Moscow's liveliest markets.
After the Revolution the GUM was nationalised and continued to work as a department store until Josef Stalin turned it into office space in 1928 for the committee in charge of his first Five Year Plan. After the suicide of Stalin's wife Nadezhda in 1932, the GUM was used to display her body.
After reopening as a department store in 1953, the GUM became one of the few stores in the Soviet Union that was not plagued by shortages of consumer goods, and the queues to purchase anything were long, often extending all across Red Square.
At the end of the Soviet era, GUM was partially — and then fully — privatized, and passed through a number of owners. It ended up in the hands of the supermarket chain Perekryostok. In May 2005, a 50.25% interest was sold to Bosco di Ciliegi, a Russian luxury-goods distributor and boutique operator. As a private shopping mall, it was renamed in such a fashion that it could maintain its old abbreviation and still be called GUM. The first word "Gosudarstvennyj" has been replaced with "Glavnyj" (Rus. Главный) 'main', so that GUM is now an abbreviation for "Main Universal Store".
It is still open today, and is a popular tourist destination for those visiting Moscow. Many of the stores feature high-fashion brand names familiar in the west; locals refer to these as the "exhibitions of prices", the joke being that no one could afford to actually buy any of the items on display. As of 2005, there were approximately 200 stores.
There is a similar historic department store rivalling GUM by its size, elegance and opulent architecture. It is called Central Universal Store (Tsentralniy Universalniy Magazin, abbreviated as TsUM) and sprawls just east of the Bolshoi Theatre.
Das größte und bekannteste Kaufhaus in Moskau und eines der größten der Welt ist das Warenhaus GUM. Es befindet sich direkt am Roten Platz, gegenüber dem Lenin-Mausoleum und dem Kreml, mitten im Herzen Moskaus. Das Moskauer Handelshaus wurde zwischen 1888 und 1893 im Auftrag des Zaren durch die Architekten Alexander Nikolajewitsch Pomeranzew und Wladimir Grigorjewitsch Schuchow im neorussischen Stil erbaut, einer neoklassizistischen
