The Empire style beyond the Arctic Circle
Looking at these photos, you can’t imagine such majestic buildings are located in one of the most northern cities in Russia, Norilsk. It is 300 kilometers to the north of the Arctic Circle, in the conditions of permafrost.
Norilsk is a city of metallurgists, built in 1935, for the most part, using forced labor.
However, the city plan was voluntarily developed by Vitold Nepokoychitsky, an architect from Leningrad, who went to the Arctic Circle at the invitation of the head of the Norilsk plant.
Nepokoychitsky was faithful to the Leningrad school of architecture and, therefore, the first buildings in the city center were in the style of neoclassicism and the Stalin Empire.
However, unlike in St. Petersburg, the buildings in Norilsk stand on stilts and are built to withstand the winds like a single wall.
The buildings in Norilsk are also brightly colored to cheer up the locals. The railway station is even designed In the same pompous style, which now houses a museum.
The master plan for Norilsk was grandiose, but it was never completed. Already in the mid-1950s, after Stalin’s death, a struggle against architectural excesses began and Norilsk ended up being full of typical “panel” buildings.
The most beautiful and unique for the Arctic region residential buildings are, however, preserved today on Leninsky Avenue.
