Adapting historic buildings for contemporary use

By Anna Karpinskaya, Associate

In St Petersburg, as in many other Russian cities, the city centre is also the historic centre. This generates numerous problems, including the need to adapt historic buildings for contemporary use in the course of developing the city centre area for business purposes. Most real estate in the historic centre falls into the category of cultural heritage items – that is, monuments of architecture and city development. Investors maintain a keen interest in such buildings due to their advantageous location; however, laws on the protection of cultural heritage items impose significant restrictions on reconstruction and major repairs of historical buildings, as well as on construction and installation works on adjacent sites, which makes it difficult to administer such real estate.

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