More than 2,995 apartments, up to 25 floors, 35 different entrances, the dystopian-looking Novy Okkervil building in Kudrovo, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, is nicknamed “the tsar of anthills.” Here’s what it looks like.
On the edge of a three-lane road, 13 kilometers from the famous Palace Square in St. Petersburg, Russia, stands the Novy Okkervil building. Organized in a circle, like a stadium, the building has the cold appearance of the great towers of post-Soviet architecture. It is nicknamed “the tsar of anthills.”
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Brown-toned walls several dozen meters high, thousands of windows to try to bring a brown of light into the apartments on the lowest floors, all accompanied by a graying sky… This is what we see in most of the images of the building found on Google and social networks. Here and there, in the middle of the parking spaces that occupy almost all the interior space of this complex, one or two playgrounds.
A few trees manage to rise above the concrete ground in this region where maximum winter temperatures are below 1°C, according to Weather Spark, a website specializing in monthly climate reports.
A city within a city
But how many people live in this complex? Content creator NFKRZ, who visited the site, claims in a YouTube video published in 2021 that “It’s the tallest building in Europe.” As he walks around, the man films a plaque at one of the building’s 35 entrances: the apartment numbers go up to 2,995.
On social media, particularly Reddit, where Internet users have been intrigued by this mysterious building since 2021, some alleged tenants of the premises estimate the number of apartments at 3,700. Just like an old Russian man that the YouTuber meets on his way: “3,800 I would even say”, he says. In total, there would then be between 11,000 and 20,000 inhabitants. For comparison, this upper range corresponds to the population of the town of Lannion, in Côtes d’Armor.
Novy Okkervil, Russia
byu/rjroa21 inUrbanHell
Restaurants, supermarkets and even a notary in the building
In the Google Street View images, which date from 2021, we notice that the ground floor of the building – lit this time by a ray of sunlight – is dedicated to shops. Some shops collect hundreds of positive reviews. There are restaurants, a bakery, a toy store, pharmacies, a medical center and even a notary.
In his video, NFKRZ also films beauty salons, a beer bar… Almost everything seems to be off, many of the iron curtains are down. However, it is daylight.
In any case, there are not many people in the middle of this tower which closes in on itself, apart from a few passers-by wrapped up in big coats who sometimes pass in front of the camera.
Perhaps this is what is fascinating, this way of life where people hide away from the cold in these large towers which, ultimately, do not seem so much from another time, contrary to what some comments suggest.
