Gostiny Dvor

About museum

Gostiny Dvor was built to a design by S. U. Remezov in 1703–1708. The building's plan is a quadrangle with two eastern and western entrance gates. The building is two-storey with basement rooms. On the upper floor there was an inn, on the ground floor — shops, and beneath them storerooms for storing goods.
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\r\nIts main purposes were to protect goods from fires and robberies and to create a representative appearance for the trading center of the capital of Siberia. From the second half of the 18th century the building housed the Tatar Commission, the civil court, a prison, a merchants' hotel, a number of provincial institutions, and from 1764 the provincial pharmacy. In 1788 the provincial administrative offices were moved to the former Gostiny Dvor.