Rossia Mall
Soviet-era cinema with twin concrete peaks echoing Mount Ararat, now a seven-floor shopping mall.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Rossia Mall in Yerevan starts with a riddle: how did a spaceship end up as a shopping mall? It traces the building back to 1968, when it opened as Cinema Rossiya, Armenia's largest movie theater, its twin cantilevered concrete peaks designed by architects Artur Tarkhanyan, Spartak Khachikyan and Hrachik Poghosyan to echo Mount Ararat. You'll hear what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed and the audience along with it, leaving the cinema dark through the 1990s. Look up at the escalators to see where the film reels once ran.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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