Do You Know That Russians Live Upside-Down and Dine in Barrels? Have a Look

Faberge Egg Fantasy in Moscow

Moscow's most unusual private home is a four-story, 342-square-meter house that resembles a huge Fabergé egg, the elaborate jeweled creations associated with the imperial family.

​Completed in 2002, the house is tucked away in a central area of Moscow. The body is red; the bottom is white and looks like an egg stand. The domed roof lined with arched and rounded windows and looks like a piece of jewelry.

​The design of the house is credited to Sergei Tkachenko, an influential architect who is also a Moscow city urban planning official.

The Upside-Down House in Siberia

One of the most unusual attractions of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk is located in the local zoo. A two-storey house which, in the literal sense of the word, is turned upside down.

​Inside is everything that is usually found inside a private home — children, bedroom, bathroom, hallway, living room, garage. Inside there is even a TV and fireplace.

Conceived by two businessmen who invented this original object, all the objects and devices inside a home work as they should.

The dimensions of the house are 6x14 meters. The "Upside down house" is the largest in Europe.

​The attraction is very popular among fans of unusual photos — standing on the ceiling or on the wall. The internal space allows up to 30 visitors at the same time.

North Caucasus: a Restaurant in a Barrel

The name of the restaurant translates from Russian as 'barrel', as it looks like a beer barrel from outside.

​The place is located in a green area of Nalchik, the capital of Russia’s North Caucasian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria.

In the 1960s, this place was a store of mineral waters with a café, built in the form of a barrel, but it was burned down.

​The place was later restored as a restaurant.

Fairy Tale House in the Urals

Blacksmith Kirillov's house is a prominent naïve decorative building located in the village Kunara of Sverdlovsk region in Russia’s Urals.

The building is a private residential home constructed between 1954 and 1967 by Sergey Kirillov, a blacksmith of the village. The structure combines the outlines of a traditional Russian decorative house (terem) with rich colorful ornaments and visual elements suggestive of fairy tales, children's art and imagery from Soviet propaganda.

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​Wooden House in Russia’s North

It was once claimed to be the world's tallest single-family wooden structure house (it is as high as a 13-storey building) built using ancient skills from logs and without even a single nail.

The Sutyagin House (after the name of its owner) was a wooden structure in Arkhangelsk, Russia. It was a 13-story, 43-meter tall residence of a local entrepreneur Nikolai Petrovich Sutyagin.

Sutyagin began building in 1992 and in the original plans it was only going to reach two stories high, a normal house. Yet he was inspired by the vernacular architecture and wooden houses of Japan and Norway to keep going for 15 years.

​Sadly in 2008, the house was condemned as a fire hazard, and ordered to be destroyed. (Most of the town is built of wood and the concern was that it would catch on fire, fall over, and then cause the entire town to burn.) Beginning with the tower, most of the house was pulled down and reduced to a pile of wooden fragments.

​What remained as of late 2009 was a small two story wooden house, roughly the size of what Sutyagin had originally planned to build, before his dreams of a wooden tower took hold. These structures were finally destroyed in a fire in 2012.

Ship-House in Siberia

Nikolay Orekhov, from the village of Kemerovo, eastern Russia, has built his house to look like a miniature replica of Noah’s ark. Not that he’s ever seen the real thing, but we’ve all been blessed with an imagination.

​The owner spent more than a year working on his unusual house shaped like some sort of a ship. The reason behind this modern version of Noah’s ark is Nikolay’s fear of floods caused by climate change. He says he’s not a fanatic but he does strongly believe in the possibility of a serious flood.

​Located in his backyard, Nikolay Orekhov’s strange house measures 9 meters in height and 14 meters in length, and is three levels high. On the first floor, the Russian builder created a bathroom (complete with sauna and swimming pool) and a small kitchen, the second floor features two bedrooms and a nursery, while the third one is a greenhouse.

Sea-Shell House in the Urals

Russian Sea-Shell House, located in Sverdlovsk region of Russia’s Urals is a 228 square meter home of Yuriy Gaydukov.

Each level of the three-story structure represents different levels of the sea — from the ocean bed to the sky above — and receives its natural lighting from an impressive 7-meter-tall stained glass window.

​The top level of the home, the main bedroom, represents the air above the sea.

​The second level, which is supposed to mimic the surface of the sea, is reached by a curvilinear staircase. A lot of the glass tile trimmings and furnishings were made by hand, but the most interesting part of the home is the basement level that represents the sea floor. The sofas are shaped like coral and sea anemones and there is a small office that looks like a grotto.

Oh, and not surprisingly, the handmade bed features a water mattress!

Shop-wagon in Kostroma

Do you want to feel like Gulliver in the land of the giants?

Then go to the first, the only and the biggest shop called "Fura", listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

Feature Kostroma avtouniversama is strikingly similar to a real truck — with the only difference that its dimensions are larger than the original by 20 times.

The rest of the huge wagon bears a striking resemblance to a living prototype: bumpers and grille, a giant exhaust pipe, and even mirrors, coupled with the fuel tank, adorning the body, creating a feeling that somewhere nearby there may be a giant driver hanging around.

​House-Wall in St. Petersburg

Architects with a sense of humor. For instance, walking along the northern capital, you know that local architects were not averse to make fun of passers-by.

One proof of this — House Wall Street Borovoy, who at a certain angle gives the impression of huge props, and the fact that people lived here, generally causes confusion among the uninitiated, residents and visitors alike.

​The fact that at first glance the building seems perfectly flat. If you look at a house in the profile, a feeling — it is so subtle that you can hardly fit one man in it. The author of this great architect is a pun Flats, which was conceived in the early XX century when the building was constructed.

By the way, the house-walls is not a rare phenomenon on the streets of St.-Petersburg.