1.
Paldiski
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Paldiski is a town and Baltic Sea port situated on the Pakri peninsula of north-western Estonia. Originally a Swedish settlement known as Rågervik, it became a Russian naval base in the 18th century, the Russians renamed it Балтийский Порт in 1762. In Estonian the name was spelled Baltiski until 1933 when the Estonian pronunciation Paldiski became the official name, on 23 June 1912 the Russian emperor Nikolai II and German kaiser Wilhelm II met for the last time before World War I in Paldiski. In 1962, Paldiski became a Soviet Navy nuclear submarine training centre, employing some 16,000 people, and with two land-based nuclear reactors, it was the largest such facility in the Soviet Union. Because of its importance, the city was closed off with barbed wire until the last Russian warship left in August 1994. This followed the events of 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, to house the stationing troops and those in training, many barracks buildings were built, which have since been left in disrepair. Russia relinquished control of facilities in September 1995, the nuclear reactors were shut down. After Estonia restored its independence, the city had not enough Estonian citizens, located some 45 km west of Tallinn, Paldiski is since then a municipality within Harju County. Derelict Soviet-style apartment buildings made up much of the town, the majority of the towns residents are ethnic Russians. The ferry company Tallink operated a regular connection with Kapellskär in Sweden, until recently, the amenities were limited to a single, small hotel. Now there are two grocery stores, an alcohol store, a bank, a tavern, and a bed & breakfast. The renovated train station also has a cafe with hot food. The housing blocks in the no longer appear dilapidated and abandoned and have been refitted and re-painted in recent years. There are also several new apartment buildings, and the areas along with childrens parks have been restored. Paldiski has two schools, Paldiski Gümnaasium and Vene Gümnaasium, in addition, there is a private pre-school facility, called Paladski Beebi Maja. There are several churches in town, the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church is dedicated to St Nicholas. Although closed for years, this church has now reopened. There are also a Pentecostal church, a Methodist church, Paldiski has a terminus station on the Elron rail line, providing a convenient link to the capital city
2.
Estonia
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Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia, across the Baltic Sea lies Sweden in the west and Finland in the north. The territory of Estonia consists of a mainland and 2,222 islands and islets in the Baltic Sea, covering 45,339 km2 of land and water, and is influenced by a humid continental climate. The territory of Estonia has been inhabited since at least 6500 BC, in 1988, during the Singing Revolution, the Estonian Supreme Soviet issued the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration in defiance of Soviet rule, and independence was restored on 20 August 1991. Estonia is a parliamentary republic divided into fifteen counties. Its capital and largest city is Tallinn, with a population of 1.3 million, it is one of the least-populous member states of the European Union, Eurozone, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, OECD and Schengen Area. Estonia is a country with an advanced, high-income economy that is among the fastest growing in the EU. Its Human Development Index ranks very highly, and it performs favourably in measurements of economic freedom, civil liberties, the 2015 PISA test places Estonian high school students 3rd in the world, behind Singapore and Japan. Citizens of Estonia are provided with health care, free education. Since independence the country has developed its IT sector, becoming one of the worlds most digitally advanced societies. In 2005 Estonia became the first nation to hold elections over the Internet, in the Estonian language, the oldest known endonym of the Estonians was maarahvas, meaning country people or people of the land. The land inhabited by Estonians was called Maavald meaning Country Parish or Land Parish, one hypothesis regarding the modern name of Estonia is that it originated from the Aesti, a people described by the Roman historian Tacitus in his Germania. The historic Aesti were allegedly Baltic people, whereas the modern Estonians are Finno-Ugric, the geographical areas between Aesti and Estonia do not match, with Aesti being further down south. Ancient Scandinavian sagas refer to a land called Eistland, as the country is called in Icelandic. Early Latin and other ancient versions of the name are Estia and Hestia, esthonia was a common alternative English spelling prior to 1921. Human settlement in Estonia became possible 13,000 to 11,000 years ago, the oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, which was on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in south-western Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating it was settled around 11,000 years ago, the earliest human inhabitation during the Mesolithic period is connected to Kunda culture, which is named after the town of Kunda in northern Estonia. At that time the country was covered with forests, and people lived in communities near bodies of water
3.
Sculpture
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Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts, a wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or molded, or cast. However, most ancient sculpture was painted, and this has been lost. Those cultures whose sculptures have survived in quantities include the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, India and China, the Western tradition of sculpture began in ancient Greece, and Greece is widely seen as producing great masterpieces in the classical period. During the Middle Ages, Gothic sculpture represented the agonies and passions of the Christian faith, the revival of classical models in the Renaissance produced famous sculptures such as Michelangelos David. Relief is often classified by the degree of projection from the wall into low or bas-relief, high relief, sunk-relief is a technique restricted to ancient Egypt. Relief sculpture may also decorate steles, upright slabs, usually of stone, techniques such as casting, stamping and moulding use an intermediate matrix containing the design to produce the work, many of these allow the production of several copies. The term sculpture is used mainly to describe large works. The very large or colossal statue has had an enduring appeal since antiquity, another grand form of portrait sculpture is the equestrian statue of a rider on horse, which has become rare in recent decades. The smallest forms of life-size portrait sculpture are the head, showing just that, or the bust, small forms of sculpture include the figurine, normally a statue that is no more than 18 inches tall, and for reliefs the plaquette, medal or coin. Sculpture is an important form of public art, a collection of sculpture in a garden setting can be called a sculpture garden. One of the most common purposes of sculpture is in form of association with religion. Cult images are common in cultures, though they are often not the colossal statues of deities which characterized ancient Greek art. The actual cult images in the innermost sanctuaries of Egyptian temples, of which none have survived, were rather small. The same is true in Hinduism, where the very simple. Some undoubtedly advanced cultures, such as the Indus Valley civilization, appear to have had no monumental sculpture at all, though producing very sophisticated figurines, the Mississippian culture seems to have been progressing towards its use, with small stone figures, when it collapsed. Other cultures, such as ancient Egypt and the Easter Island culture, from the 20th century the relatively restricted range of subjects found in large sculpture expanded greatly, with abstract subjects and the use or representation of any type of subject now common. Today much sculpture is made for intermittent display in galleries and museums, small sculpted fittings for furniture and other objects go well back into antiquity, as in the Nimrud ivories, Begram ivories and finds from the tomb of Tutankhamun
4.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
5.
Imperial Academy of Arts
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The Russian Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, informally known as the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, the academy promoted the neoclassical style and technique, and sent its promising students to European capitals for further study. Training at the academy was virtually required for artists to make successful careers, formally abolished in 1918 after the Russian Revolution, the academy was renamed several times. It established free tuition, students from across the country competed fiercely for its few places annually, in 1947 the national institution was moved to Moscow, and much of its art collection was moved to the Hermitage. The building in Leningrad was devoted to the Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, since 1991 it has been called the St. Petersburg Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The academy was located in the Shuvalov Palace on Sadovaya Street, in 1764, Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned its first rector, Alexander Kokorinov, to design a new building. It took 25 years to complete the Neoclassical edifice, which opened in 1789, konstantin Thon was responsible for the sumptuous decoration of the interiors. He also designed a quayside in front of the building, with stairs down to the Neva River, Ivan Betskoy reorganized the academy into a de facto government department, it supervised matters concerning art throughout the country, distributing orders and awarding ranks to artists. The academy vigorously promoted the principles of Neoclassicism by sending the most notable Russian painters abroad, in order to learn the ancient and Renaissance styles of Italy and it also had its own sizable collection of choice artworks intended for study and copying. The adherents of this movement became known as peredvizhniki, led by Ivan Kramskoi, they publicly broke with the Academy and organized their own exhibitions, which traveled from town to town across Russia. Ilya Repin, Mikhail Vrubel and some other painters still regarded the academys training as indispensable for the development of professional and technical skills. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Imperial Academy passed through a series of transformations, after the Academys move to Moscow that year, the building in what was then called Leningrad was renamed Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The national academy has stayed in Moscow, in 1991 it was renamed the Russian Academy of Arts. The old academys art collection, which included works by Poussin, David. During the Soviet era, academies were free of tuition fees as they were financed by the government, many would-be students would apply to the Academy for as many as six or seven years in a row without success. With just twenty places available and thousands of applicants, the competition was brutal, well-known graduates of Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1930–1950s include, The Russian Academy of Arts has been headquartered in Moscow since 1947. Its current president is Zurab Tsereteli and its vice-president is Tair Salakhov and it is also called the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Fine Arts, Sculpture and Architecture. - Saint Petersburg, NP-Print Edition,2007, the Leningrad School Russian Academy of Arts The St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Fine Arts Sergei V. Ivanov
6.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
7.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
8.
Jules Dalou
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Aimé-Jules Dalou was a French sculptor, recognized as one of the most brilliant virtuosos of nineteenth-century France, admired for his perceptiveness, execution, and unpretentious realism. Born in Paris to a family of Huguenot background, he was raised in an atmosphere of secularity. He was the pupil of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, who sponsored him for the Petite École, in 1854 he attended the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris in the François-Joseph Duret classroom. Dalou first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1861, but he made no secret of his working-class sympathies and his politics obstructed his career under the Second Empire, he was repeatedly refused the Prix de Rome that opened sculptors careers to future official commissions. He started to work for decorators, and there met Rodin with which began their friendship and he made a quiet living providing decorative sculpture for the structures that lined Pariss new boulevards and providing wax models for jewelry. He married Irma Vuillier, a partnership that sustained him throughout his life, they had one daughter, Georgette, dalous Daphnis and Chloe shown at the Paris salon of 1869, was purchased by the State. He rapidly made a name through his appointment teaching at the South London Technical Art School and he was convicted in absentia by the French government of participation in the Commune, and given a life sentence. He also recommended his friend and colleague Édouard Lantéri to move from France to England and he returned to France in 1879, after the declaration of amnesty, and produced a number of masterpieces. It is somewhat in the taste of the Louis XIV period, ornate, within a few days, his great Monument to Alphand, which almost equalled the success achieved by the Monument to Delacroix in the Luxembourg Garden, was inaugurated. Dalou, who was awarded the Grand Prix of the Exposition Universelle, was made a commander of the Legion of Honor and he was one of the founders of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and was the first president of the sculpture section. Dalou died in Paris on 15 April 1902, aged 63, and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. W
9.
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
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Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux was a French sculptor and painter during the Second Empire under Napoleon III. Born in Valenciennes, Nord, son of a mason, his studies were under François Rude. Carpeaux entered the École des Beaux-Arts in 1844 and won the Prix de Rome in 1854, staying in Rome from 1854 to 1861, he obtained a taste for movement and spontaneity, which he joined with the great principles of baroque art. Carpeaux sought real life subjects in the streets and broke with the classical tradition, Carpeaux debuted at the Salon in 1853 exhibiting La Soumission dAbd-el-Kader alEmperuer, a bas-relief in plaster that did not attract much attention. Carpeaux was an admirer of Napoléon III and followed him from city to city during Napoléons official trip through the north of France, Carpeaux soon grew tired of academicism and became a wanderer on the streets of Rome. He spent free time admiring the frescoes of Michelangelo at the Sistine Chapel, Carpeaux said, When an artist feels pale and cold, he runs to Michelangelo in order to warm himself, as with the rays of the sun. While a student in Rome, Carpeaux submitted a version of Pêcheur napolitain à la coquille. He carved the marble version several years later, showing it in the Salon exhibition of 1863 and it was purchased for Napoleon IIIs empress, Eugénie. The statue of the smiling boy was very popular, and Carpeaux created a number of reproductions and variations in marble. There is a copy, for instance, in the Samuel H. Kress Collection in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, some years later, he carved the Girl with a Shell, a very similar study. In 1861, he made a bust of Princess Mathilde, then in 1866, he established his own atelier in order to reproduce and make work on a grander scale. In 1866, he was awarded the chevalier of the Legion of Honour and he employed his brother as the sales manager and made a calculated effort to produce work that would appeal to a larger audience. On 12 October 1875, he died at the Chateau de Bécon, among his students were Jules Dalou, Jean-Louis Forain and the American sculptor Olin Levi Warner. Carpeaux died at age 48 in Courbevoie, ugolin et ses fils with versions in other museums including the Musée dOrsay, Paris. Partly complete at his death, Carpeaux finished the terrestrial globe with the points represented by the four figures of Asia, Europe. LAmour à la folie, part of a group La danse for the facade of the Opera Garnier A page from insecula
10.
Russalka Memorial
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It was the first monument in Estonia made by an Estonian sculptor. The monument depicts an angel holding an Orthodox cross towards the direction of the shipwreck. The model for the angel was the sculptors housekeeper Juliana Rootsi, whose grandson is the politician, in 2005, Eesti Post issued a postage stamp series for the 150th anniversary of the sculptor, with the Russalka Memorial depicted on the cover. Media related to Rusalka Memorial at Wikimedia Commons From Mermaid - to the Kursk
11.
Russian monitor Rusalka
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Rusalka, was one of two Charodeika-class monitors built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1860s. She served for her career with the Baltic Fleet. Aside from hitting a rock not long after she was completed in 1869. Rusalka sank in a storm in 1893 with the loss of all hands in the Gulf of Finland, a memorial was built in Reval to commemorate her loss almost a decade later. Her wreck was rediscovered in 2003, bow-down in the mud, Rusalka was 206 feet long at the waterline. She had a beam of 42 feet and a draft of 12 feet 7 inches. The ship was designed to displace 1,882 long tons and her crew numbered 13 officers and 171 crewmen in 1877. The ship had two simple horizontal direct-acting steam engines, each driving a single propeller and she carried a maximum of 250 long tons of coal for her boilers. Rusalka was initially armed with a pair of nine-inch rifled Model 1867 guns in the gun turret. The Rodman guns were replaced by a pair of Obukhov 9-inch rifled guns in 1871 and all of the guns were replaced in their turn by longer. No light guns for use against torpedo boats are known to have been fitted aboard the ship before the 1870s when she received 3 four-pounder 3. The ship had a waterline belt of wrought iron that was 4.5 inches thick amidships. The armor was backed by 12 to 18 inches of teak, the circular turrets were protected by armor 5.5 inches thick and the walls of the ships oval conning tower were also 4.5 inches thick. Her deck was 1 inch thick amidships, but reduced to 0. 25–0.5 inches at the ends of the ship and she was launched on 12 September 1867 and completed in 1869 at the cost of 762,000 rubles. Construction was considerably delayed by late deliveries of drawings, material, the ship struck an uncharted rock off the Finnish coast in June 1869 and damaged her bottom plating badly enough that she had to be run aground to prevent her from sinking. Rusalka served her entire career with the Baltic Fleet and was assigned to the Artillery Training Detachment in March 1870, the ship had her boilers replaced in 1878 and 1891 and she was reclassified as a coast-defense ironclad on 13 February 1892. Rusalka, under the command of Captain 2nd Rank V. Kh, ienish sailed from Reval harbor at 08,30 on 7 September 1893, bound for Helsingfors. She was escorted by the gunboat Tucha under Captain 2nd Rank N. M. Lushkov, no trace of the monitor was found until the corpse of a sailor in a dinghy and a few lifebuoys washed ashore on the Finnish island of Kremare
12.
Eliseyev Emporium (Saint Petersburg)
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Elisseeff Emporium in St. Petersburg is a large retail and entertainment complex, including a famous food hall, constructed in 1902–1903 for the Elisseeff Brothers. Located at 56 Nevsky Prospekt, the complex consists of three buildings, although the one is the structure that is referred to as Elisseeff’s store or shop. A restaurant formerly stood at the site, in 1881, revolutionary Narodniks built a tunnel under Malaya Sadovaya Street from the basement of that building, preparing to plant mines to assassinate Czar Alexander II. By March 1 the preparations were complete, but the Czar did not pass that way on that day, the present building was constructed 1902–1903. Before the revolution of 1917, the shop was under the control of the Elisseeff Brothers merchants, from 1917 to the 1990s, the shop was operated by a state company. It was known as Gastronom No.1, in the mid-1990s, the shop was operated by a Public limited company Eliseevsky shop. The holding company Parnas-M which was received in 1995 the right to receive the rent of the trading floor for 49 years. On July 29,2002, the company «Eliseevsky shop» declared its intention to part of the trading house. The company intended to lease 2,200 square metres, the rent was estimated to be $1 million, in the autumn of 2005 Parnas M declared the intention to sell a lease of the Eliseevsky shop to Arbat-prestige a Moscow perfumery network. Arbat-prestige was to have been in the trading floor with an area of 900 square metres to sell its perfumery goods. The Elisseeff Emporium would have become the leader of its St. Petersburg network, the shop cost was estimated to be $10 million, and the total cost of all investments towards the project of development of an Arbat-prestige network were estimated to be $80 million. The idea of a reshaping the most known delicatessen in the city to a shop has caused negative reaction of society. The Saint Petersburg City Administration has actually put in a veto for the transaction, in February 2006, owners Parnas M declared the Eliseevsky shop unprofitable and made the decision to sell a small trading floor to Italian firm Benetton on February 17,2006. In March 2006 Parnas M and the city managed to agree to a partial reshaping of the activity of the shop. The shop was supposed to divide delicacies into zones in which alcoholic drinks would be on sale. On January 15,2007, the shop was closed for half a year for major repairs, an agreement was signed with the city that upon termination of repair work in a building the delicatessen will open again. Works are still being conducted, they are carried out by company IBGroup which carefully restores building interiors under supervision KGIOP, in July 2009, eviction of Eliseevsky shop company from a building on Nevsky Prospekt was considered in a court case. The Committee for the Management of City Property of Saint Petersburg City Administration took action against the Eliseevsky shop company because of serious debts on a rent, consideration has been postponed for the beginning of October in connection with necessity of gathering by the parties of additional documents
