Rossiya Hotel

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The enormous cuboid Россия hotel looms over the Kremlin compound.

The Rossiya Hotel (Russian: Россия) was built in Moscow in 1967 at the order of Nikita Khrushchev. At the time of its construction it was the largest hotel in the world; nearly forty years later when it was shut down, it was still the largest in Europe. It had three thousand rooms, a post office, a health club, a nightclub, a movie theater and a barber shop as well as the 2500-seat State Central Concert Hall. The hotel was adjacent to Red Square, its 21-story tower loomed over the Kremlin walls and the cupolas of Saint Basil's Cathedral. Construction used the existing foundations of the cancelled skyscraper project (the eighth of Seven Sisters (Moscow); large portions of a historic district of Moscow, known as Zaryadye, was demolished in 1940's, long before Rossiya was conceived.

In 1977, there was a massive fire in the hotel. The official death toll was 42 killed and over 50 injured. [1]

The Rossiya Hotel officially closed its doors on January 1, 2006; demolition began in March 2006 to make room for an entertainment complex whose design will be loosely based on the design of the old Zaryadye district it was built over. [2] [3] The site is being designed by British architect Sir Norman Foster and includes plans for a new two thousand room hotel, apartments, and a parking garage. The developer of the site is Shalva Chigirinsky, a Russian oligarch, who also owns Sibir Energy.^[1]