Location – Murmansk city, Pushkinskaya Street, 3

Something interesting happens in the S. M. Kirov Palace of Culture almost every day. In different years, its walls hosted museum collections, actors from the regional drama theater performed here, there was a cinema where silent films were shown, and even a school operated here.

The Palace of Culture was conceived as a House of Culture for fishermen. The chosen location for construction is significant, in the very center of the city on Pushkinskaya Street, next to the future Five Corners Square. Not far from the central entrance you will see a wooden cross. In its place there was to be a temple in honor of the patron saint of sailors, Nicholas of Myra, and here the first stone of Romanov-na-Murmane, a city that is now called Murmansk, was laid.

Architect Nikolai Miturich envisioned a palace in the constructivist style. The Kirov Palace of Culture was ceremonially opened on November 7, 1932. On February 23, 1949, it celebrated its second birthday: during the Great Patriotic War, the building was almost completely destroyed, only the gym remained, so everything was rebuilt from scratch. Today, the Palace is still home to dozens of creative groups.

KVN teams, vocal ensembles of folk and author's songs, dance ensembles, choirs, a folk drama theater and an amateur circus rehearse and perform here. There are meetings of astronomy enthusiasts, photographers, needlewomen and there is even a yoga center. The S. M. Kirov Palace of Culture is an invariable place for festive meetings in honor of the birthday of the Murmansk region or Murmansk, film festivals, the "Beauty of the Arctic" beauty contest, the inauguration of governors and the head of the regional center. Laima Vaikule, Alexander Gradsky, Sergey Penkin, DiDuLya, Valery Gergiev with the Mariinsky Theater Orchestra have performed on its stage.

The palace has hosted such famous people as Yuri Gagarin, Konstantin Simonov, Fidel Castro, Isaak Dunaevsky, and Sergei Obraztsov. The cultural center has a winter garden where you can even have a photo shoot, and the zoo is open for visits and excursions.

After listening to Pavel Viktorovich Fyodorov's podcast "Architectural Walks Around Murmansk", you will learn how the pre-war appearance of this building differed from the modern one, and which celebrities visited it.