It's just a big empty space like an abandoned car park surrounded by Soviet-style buildings.

These days, though, a line of ordinary people waits patiently outside the vaguely Soviet-style building.

Flanked to the east and west by stern 1950s Soviet-style buildings and ringed by white perimeter fences that channel the hoi polloi towards periodic security checks and bag searches, the world's largest public square (440,000 sq metres) is a vast desert of paving stones at the heart of Běijīng.

Out on the street, we walked to the Stalinallee, a large showcase boulevard lined with chunky white wedding cakes of Soviet-style buildings.

Mr. Khinsagov and several of his cohort entered Georgia in late January 2006, and on Feb. 1 they were arrested in a two-room apartment on the eighth floor of a crumbling Soviet-style building in a lower-class district of Tbilisi.

D Map At the back of the prominent, Soviet-style greyish building, this is the only independent restaurant on Taulud Island.

Drop into this gritty but groovy city for the weekend and you'll discover budding art stars, avant-garde fashion and Soviet-style buildings preserved in curatorial amber.

Once a city of broad, tree-lined avenues and Soviet-style buildings, Grozny was all but destroyed two years ago in a ferocious Russian bombardment.

It is renowned for its Soviet-style main building, built in 1956.