Heaviest building moved intact

The heaviest structure to be moved without any disassembly or demolition is 39 Fizuli/Fuzuli Street, a historic mansion in the Nizami neighbourhood of Baku, Azerbaijan. The stone masonry structure, built by oil magnate Isa Bey Hajinski in 1908, is 52 m (170 ft) long, 20 m (66 ft) high and extends back 35 m (115 ft) from the street. The 18,000-tonne (19,840-US-ton) structure was moved 10.5 m (35 ft) between 23–27 April 2013 to make space for a road-widening project. The work was undertaken by Dutch engineering firm Bresser and local specialist contractors.

The process of moving the building involved building new structural supports into the walls of the building's basement, then constructing a set of steel-and-concrete rails beneath the supports. The connection to the original foundation was then carefully demolished, shifting the weight of the building to the new supports and the rails beneath them. A set of nine hydraulic jacks were then used to slowly push the building back from the existing street frontage.