Novokuznetskaya Metro Station

The Church of the Holy Martyr Paraskeva has stood at the current site of the metro station since the 16th century. Paraskeva is the patron saint of merchants and entrepreneurs and the guarantor of fair trade. For this reason, the church contained a standard arshin (an old unit of measurement akin to a cubit) for merchants to use as a reference. It is said that disreputable merchants were made to swallow a measuring stick the length of an arshin (about 71 cm). This gave rise to a Russian expression that translates as 'to walk like you swallowed an arshin'. The church has been rebuilt several times using funds provided by wealthy merchants. One such patron was the merchant Pyotr Gubonin.