Lomonosov Moscow State University
Tuesday, 1st November 2005 by Alex Turnbull
Founded in 1755, Lomonosov Moscow State University is the oldest and largest university in Russia. The main building was built in 1953 and stands at 240 metres, making it... (can you see what's coming yet?), the tallest educational establishment in the world.
This place is huge in every sense of the word. For starters, just look at the scale of the grounds, then consider that the university has over 50,000 students* and employs around 24,000 people** and finally... well, just look at it! It's bloody enormous!
More info (as always) at Wikipedia, and there's a tour with some fantastic images at the official site.
P.S. The Moscow State University tower is the tallest of a set of seven towers which Stalin had built in Moscow...
Note:
* Students are based at several different campuses
** Figure includes auxiliary staff
Thanks to Sergei Vavinov, Loc, PihTa and Matthew Kehrt.
Moscow also has the tallest building in Europe, Triumph-Palace, which was completed in 2003.
Google’s satellite image shows the construction site: View Placemark
Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph-Palace
Anyone know the cost of going there? I didn’t bother looking it up and it will probably tell me. Oh well 😛
BTW, the building itself obviously is not as old as 1755 😉 It’s one of the eight (IIRC) Moscow stalinist era “skyscrapers”. A copy of this is in Warsaw, a tallest building in Poland (also house to several academic facilities), Palace of Culture and Science: View Placemark
Forgot about this: the Palace of Culture in Warsaw is apparently the only building of this architectural style outside Moscow.
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Sisters_(Moscow)
The sentence ‘founded in 1755… and standing at 240 meters’ isn’t sounds correctly.. author don’t point to difference between the University as a high scool and as a building. The Moscow University was founded in 1755, it is right, but the Main Building (or Glavnoe Zdanie in Russian) was builded only in 1953. And, despite of its enormous size, only three faculties are placed in it. 24 000 students are number of all students, they are educated in almost 20 other buildings. The significant part of this ‘scyscraper’ – students’ living rooms.
Reo and Pradera: I stand by what I originally said, the university was founded in 1755, I never claimed it was built then 😉
However I appreciate that there could be confusion, so I’ve updated the post.
If you look a bit to the northeast you can see a ski jump ramp that was constructed when the complex (mostly across the river) for the 1980 Olympics was being built. I know, the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow were of the summer variety, but they built the ramp for the sake of having a more complete training facility in the years that were to follow. It may be a little difficult to make out the ramp, but the main stadium and other venues across the river are still interesting, especially since we didn’t go to see them on TV in the U.S. during the boycotted games.