Kazansky Railway Station

Listen first. A tannoy announcement rolls across the square, then the rumble of luggage wheels on stone, then a train horn somewhere behind the walls. Look up and you will see something that does not look like a railway station at all. A tall tower climbs above the rooftops, stepped and pointed, with a clock set high in its face. Pale stone, red trim, green roofs. It looks more like the gate of an old fortress city than a place to buy a ticket. That is the first surprise of Kazansky Station, and it was entirely deliberate.

You are standing on Komsomolskaya Square, which Muscovites often call the Square of Three Stations. Three great terminals face each other here. Across from you stand Leningradsky Station, for trains to Saint Petersburg, and Yaroslavsky Station, the starting point of the Trans-Siberian route. Kazansky Station serves the east and the south. From these platforms, trains leave for Kazan, for the Volga region, for the Urals, and on toward Central Asia. Few places in the world gather so many journeys into one square.

The station began much more modestly. In the 1860s a small terminal opened here for the railway toward Ryazan, a city southeast of Moscow. For years people knew it as Ryazansky Station. As the line pushed further east, toward Kazan on the Volga, the name changed to match the new destination. By the start of the twentieth century, the old building was far too small for the traffic. The railway company wanted something grand, a building that would announce the importance of the eastern lines.

The man chosen for the job was the architect Alexey Shchusev. Later in his career, Shchusev designed Lenin's Mausoleum on Red Square. That is the second surprise for many visitors. The same mind that shaped the stark red and black tomb also shaped this colourful, playful facade. Here, Shchusev took the opposite approach. Instead of simple geometry, he gathered towers, arches, carved window frames and tiled roofs into one long, rambling composition.

His central idea was simple and clever. A station is a gateway. So Shchusev made this building look like a gateway to the East. The tall main tower takes its inspiration from the Söyembikä Tower, a famous leaning tower inside the Kremlin of Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan. In other words, travellers heading to Kazan see a piece of Kazan before they even board the train. When they arrive at the other end, they meet the original.

Now let your eyes move along the facade from left to right. You will notice that the building does not follow one single style. Some sections recall the churches and palaces of seventeenth-century Moscow, with their decorated windows and steep roofs. Other parts carry echoes of Tatar and Central Asian architecture. Shchusev wanted the building to tell the story of the route itself, moving from Russian forms toward the traditions of the lands further east. It reads almost like a map built in stone.

Construction started in the 1910s, just before the First World War. Then history interrupted. War, revolution and civil war slowed the work almost to a stop. The building was completed in stages, and the main structure opened in the mid-1920s, under a completely different government from the one that had commissioned it. Finishing touches continued for years afterwards. So this station, designed in the last years of the Russian Empire, was finished in the early Soviet era.

Look up again at the clock on the main tower. Around its face you can see the signs of the zodiac. It is an unusual choice for a railway clock, which normally exists only to keep trains on time. Here, the clock also points to a larger, older idea of time, the turning of the stars and the seasons. Travellers rushing for a departure rarely notice it. Take a moment to find your own sign.

Shchusev did not work alone. He invited some of the leading Russian artists of his day to decorate the interiors. The painter Yevgeny Lanceray created ceiling paintings for the station restaurant. Other artists of the same circle prepared designs as well, though not every plan was carried out in the difficult years after the revolution. The result is a station where art was treated as part of the journey, not as an afterthought.

Inside, the halls are busy at almost any hour. The crowd here is a good picture of the routes the station serves. You may hear Russian alongside Tatar, Uzbek, Tajik and other languages. Families carry heavy bags and boxes tied with string. Students head home for the holidays. Workers return from long contracts in the city. Long-distance trains here can take a day or more to reach their destinations, so people come prepared, with food for the journey and patience for the wait.

If you step back toward the centre of the square, you can compare the three stations side by side. Each one looks different, because each was designed to suggest its own destination. Kazansky looks toward the East. Its neighbours carry their own regional character. Together they make the square a kind of open-air lesson in how architects of that age thought about travel. A building was not just a shelter. It was a promise about where you were going.

Before you leave, consider going underground. Beneath the square lies Komsomolskaya metro station on the circle line. Shchusev also worked on that station, and it was one of his final projects. Its long hall has a high, richly decorated ceiling with mosaics, chandeliers and yellow-toned stone. Seeing it straight after Kazansky Station shows how one architect carried his love of ornament from the street level down into the metro.

For now, stay a little longer on the square. Watch the tower against the sky. Notice how the light changes on the pale stone as clouds pass over. Listen to the next announcement, and think of the train it describes, setting off toward the Volga, the steppe or the mountains far to the south. Every person walking past you carries a different journey. This building was made to send them off with a glimpse of where they are going, and that gift is still here, for anyone who stops to look up.