Most Beautiful Train Stations in the World (PART 3)

Haydarpaşa Railway Station

Less famous—but no less grand—than Istanbul’s Sirkeci station, Haydarpaşa has the
distinction of being built on land reclaimed from the Bosporus Strait, which leaves it
surrounded by water on three sides. The imposing neoclassical edifice, designed by
German architects Otto Ritter and Helmut Conu, was inaugurated in 1909 on the birthday
of the reigning sultan, Mehmed V.

The station’s concourse features coffered barrel-vault ceilings and generous windows.
While Haydarpaşa closed in 2012 for restoration and the development of high-speed
lines, it’s still an impressive sight from the exterior, best viewed by boat.

Southern Cross Station, Melbourne

Stretching an entire city block, Melbourne’s elaborate station features an undulating roof
that rests on a series of Y-shaped columns. The structure was renovated in 2005 (and
renamed—it was previously known as Spencer Street Station, for its location) and now
displays an innovative design by Grimshaw Architects.
Union Station
Father-son architects John and Donald Parkinson blended Spanish Colonial and Art Deco
styles for Los Angeles’s main railway station, completed in 1939, which is the largest
passenger train terminal in the western U.S. Patios line the walls of the station’s waiting
room, while travertine marble covers the station’s interior walls on the lower level.

Metro Station Komsomolskaya

Joseph Stalin oversaw the construction of this baroque "palace for the people," which
was completed in 1952 only a year before he died. The platform of the Moscow subway
station pictured here has 68 limestone-and-marble pillars rising from a granite floor. Lining
its sunflower-yellow ceiling are glittering mosaic panels decorated with smalt (cobalt glass
ground into pigment) and precious stones, each mural paying tribute to a historic Russian
military triumph. A decade after Stalin—and such opulence—had fallen out of favor, his
images in two panels were removed, and the party line turned to "kilometers at the
expense of architecture," an ideology favoring function over form.