The building of the former prison complex “Kresty” in St. Petersburg will be put up for auction before the end of the year, said the general director of “Dom.RF” Vitaly Mutko, writes RBC.
The initial price of the property at the auction could be around 1 billion rubles (around $11.2 million), but the exact amount will only be known after the assessment is completed at the time the auction is announced, Mutko explained, Vedomosti reports. The publication says that Mutko made the corresponding statement at the Eastern Economic Forum.
The Kresty prison complex was built in 1884-1889 on Arsenalnaya Embankment on the site of a former brewery and wine cellars by architect Antoni Tomishko. It includes two cross-shaped five-story buildings, which were conceived as prison buildings for 960 solitary confinement cells, as well as an administrative building with a church, quarters for employees, a kitchen, a hospital, an isolation ward, a bathhouse, a boiler room, an icehouse, and a forge. The prison was recognized as one of the most exemplary and difficult to escape. Kresty was used to imprison criminal and political prisoners. At various times, Leon Trotsky, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Lev Gumilyov, and Joseph Brodsky were imprisoned there. At the end of 2017, the prison was transferred to Novye Kresty in Kolpino. Last year, the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) transferred this building, which is a designated cultural heritage site, to the Dom.RF corporation for sale.