ABC Russian: 6 Moscow train stations that are temples of art, architecture and history

Since the late 19th century Moscow has been the center of Russia’s vast railroad network, and the history of the city’s main train stations, mostly built around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, has been closely interwoven with that of the country’s development. 

Moscow’s first train station, formerly known as Nikolayevsky in honor of Russia’s Emperor Nicholas I, symbolizes the country’s early period of rail development in the mid 19th century. At that time, a railway first connected Moscow and St Petersburg. Incidentally, this railway was built under the supervision of American engineers.

Two identical station buildings were erected in the empire’s two major cities. The station in St. Petersburg is currently known as Moskovsky. Meanwhile, the station at the other end in Moscow was completed in 1849. Trains connecting Russia’s two capitals began to operate in 1851.

In the mid-2000s, Russian Railways, the national railway company, announced that the station would be returned its original name, Nikolayevsky, but nothing came out of the idea, and the station is still known as Leningradsky.

The site of the Yaroslavsky Train Station was once home to the Artillery Court – a weapons factory and warehouse. During the 1812 war against Napoleon’s army, it burned down due to explosions caused by stored ammunition.

The first building of the Yaroslavsky (then Troitsky) appeared in 1862 and originally served a short stretch of railway between Moscow and Sergiev Posad. As the railway was expanded further north, the station was given the name Severny (Northern), but was renamed back to Yaroslavsky in 1955. A new building was erected in 1904, designed by famous architect Fyodor Shekhtel in a style inspired by medieval Russian architecture.

Incidentally, several people involved in the construction of both the railway and the station had connections to Russian literature. Engineer Fyodor Chizhov, who oversaw the project, was also Nikolai Gogol’s editor and executor of his will. One of the company’s main shareholders financing construction was Andrei Delvig, a nephew of poet Anton Delvig.