Did you know about Castle Quarter's Russian cousin?
The Okhotny Ryad mall in Moscow. - Credit: flowcomm Flickr
Castle Quarter has been a Norwich institution for decades, but did you know it has a twin some 1,749 miles away in Russia?
It all came about after then mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, visited Norwich shortly after the mall's construction in 1993.
Impressed with the shopping centre, Mr Luzhkov asked the architect Michael Innes to design an identical structure in the city's Manczhnaya Square, where he had been struggling for a number of years to construct a shopping mall at an affordable cost.
The new mall, named Okhotny Ryad, was built in Moscow in 1997, four years after what was known at the time as the Castle Mall, at a cost of £200m.
It has had an eventful life, even before it was built, former US president Donald Trump involved in talks to build the mall, before it was bombed by a terrorist called Khalid Khuguyev in 1999.
Looking at pictures of the Russian mall, its two glass roofs look identical to those in Norwich, although not based in the grounds of a castle, while inside its central staircase and three storey design are the spitting image of its Norfolk relative.
And for comparison here are some pictures of Castle Quarter.