Russia’s gold, as a single cube

The holding

Russia’s gold reserve, in proportion

Russia's central bank holds about 2,305 tonnes of gold — one of the ten biggest official holders. That is a number most people cannot picture, so picture this instead: gathered into one solid block, every bar of it would form a cube roughly 4.9 m on each side — about one and a half storeys tall. Gold is so dense (19.32 grams per cubic centimetre, about two and a half times the density of iron) that Russia's entire reserve, worth approximately $308 billion, would occupy only about 119 cubic meters.

Gold makes up 40.6% of Russia's official reserves — a moderate allocation, broadly in line with the world average of about 29%. Measured against the world's monetary gold, that block is about 6.3% of all the bullion held by every central bank and treasury on the planet. Russia sits in Eastern Europe, a region whose central banks have been among the keenest recent gold buyers.

The metal is held at Central Bank of Russia vaults, Moscow. In recent years Russia has been a net buyer, steadily adding to the pile — part of the broad return to gold among emerging-market and reserve-diversifying central banks. Whether a reserve is growing or steady, its physical footprint barely changes: even doubling Russia's gold would only widen the cube by about a quarter — the defining paradox of the metal is that staggering value keeps collapsing into a remarkably small space.

It is worth holding the comparison in mind. The largest reserve on Earth, the United States', is a cube only 7.5 m per side; all the gold ever mined in human history fits inside a cube about 22 m per side — the size of a seven-story building. Russia's share of that 6,000-year inheritance is the block you see above.