Central Street and Saint Sophia Cathedral (Harbin)

Historic Pedestrian Street; Saint Sophia Cathedral Is A Major Historical And Cultural Site Protected At The National Level · Harbin, Heilongjiang

The European heart of Harbin, the city that grew from a railway camp into the "Paris of the East" after Russia built the Chinese Eastern Railway through Manchuria from 1898. Central Street, a pedestrian avenue of about 1.4 km paved in 1924 with thousands of loaf-shaped granite setts, runs from the old town to the Songhua River between Baroque, Renaissance and Art Nouveau facades built by Russian, Jewish and other merchants, including the Modern Hotel of 1906, whose Madieer ice lollies are eaten on the street even at -25 C. At its northern end lie Stalin Park and the Flood Control Monument on the river promenade, where locals swim in summer and carve ice in winter. A few blocks east rises Saint Sophia Cathedral, a red-brick Russian Orthodox church with a great green onion dome, completed in its present form in 1932 and now a museum of old Harbin architecture and photographs, surrounded by a square full of pigeons and, in winter, ice sculptures. Harbin's Russian bread, red sausage, beer and Western restaurants line the street, and across the river in winter lies Ice and Snow World.

Central Street (Zhongyang Dajie), Daoli District, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China

Central Street open at all hours. Saint Sophia Cathedral museum about 8:30-17:00, with the exterior and square lit in the evening.

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