Central Pavilion of VDNKh

Pavilion number one stands on the main axis of the exhibition just beyond the entrance arch and sets the tone for the whole ensemble. The building was put up in 1954 to a design by Yuri Shchuko and Yevgeny Stolyarov: a wide facade with columned porticoes, moulded coats of arms of the republics along the frieze, and a tower with a gilded spire rising more than seventy metres. At the top of the spire is a five-pointed star, and beneath it banners in relief; the whole composition deliberately echoes the Stalinist high-rises going up in the same years. In front of the pavilion opens the Square of the Friendship of Peoples, from which the facade is visible in full, with no greenery in the way. In Soviet times the halls displayed the achievements of the union republics, later they were taken over by fairs and exhibitions, and in recent years a museum exhibition about the country's history has been working here. In the evening the colonnade is floodlit, and the pavilion reads like a theatre set at the end of a long perspective.

On the map