It was one of Britain’s finest Edwardian buildings until an IRA bomb ripped through its Portland stone and red granite façade in 1992.

The Baltic Exchange, built in 1903 with an opulence befitting the headquarters of global maritime trade, could not be restored on site and its marble columns, teak panelling and plaster sea monsters made way for Sir Norman Foster’s Swiss Re tower – better known as the Gherkin.

After spending nearly a decade in various salvage yards around Britain, the former Grade II* listed building is set to rise again, this time on the shores of the Baltic itself. The dismantled building was bought for £800,000 by two businessmen from Estonia after one of them found an advertisement on the internet for the building while looking for antique flooring.

The last consignment of the 45 shipping crates containing the carefully catalogued remains of the exchange has now arrived in the Baltic seaport of Paldiski where it will be kept before being rebuilt in Tallinn, the Estonian capital.

When it opened at 38 St Mary Axe in the City, the interior was described by The Magazine of Commerce as a “veritable fairy palace . . . every column, every inch of wall space is of marble, carefully chosen to fulfil its purpose in a chromatic scheme . . . The result is rich and magnificent beyond anything else that London can show.”

Now the sumptuous trading hall, which served as a backdrop in the film Howard’s End and features a statue of Britannia ruling the waves as well as effigies of Neptune and Ceres, is set to become the home of Estonia’s maritime museum. “It was a beautiful building with a classic portico and an elegant triangular frieze at the top and lots of pink marble which came from one particular source in Italy,” said Jeremy Penn, chief executive of the Baltic Exchange company, founded in 1857 and still based in the City near its former home.

“The trading floor was a huge open space where, at its peak, a couple of thousand shipbrokers would come in the morning to meet their business contacts and discuss the market and make deals.” While the company still facilitates international shipping trade, this is now conducted by telephone and e-mail.

The latest extraordinary chapter in the building’s history followed the chance discovery that it was up for sale by Eerik-Niiles Kross, one of the two business partners behind the revival project.

Mr Kross stumbled across an online advertisement for “two giant-order façades, one with portland Corinthian capitals and pediment, granite columns, two 50ft apsidal lobbies with marble columns, marble staircases, square marble columned trading floor, marble pulpit, 20 large mahogany window frames with marble-clad surrounds, brass door furniture, mahogany doors, trading booths, 100 marble columns, carved Portland plaques, brass and bronze lamp fittings”.

The Baltic Exchange had been carefully catalogued with 5,000 photographs when it was dismantled in the hope that it could one day be rebuilt. Mr Kross, who knew the building from his student days in London, teamed up with Heiti Haal, an oil millionaire, to buy the 1,000-tonne ruins and put together a €12 million (£8.2m) restoration plan.

Sander Pullerits, the project manager, said: “We cannot rebuild it exactly as it once was because it would be financially impossible. We plan to connect new architecture with the building but we will reconstruct the old façade as it once was and recreate the atmosphere inside.” It would be rebuilt by 2010, he added.

Relocation, relocation

— Marble Arch in London was originally constructed as a triumphal addition to Buckingham Palace, commemorating Trafalgar and Waterloo. Queen Victoria later had it moved to Hyde Park to make room for a new wing when she and Albert had children

— In 1999 the decommissioned Belle Tout Lighthouse on Beachy Head was moved 50m back from the cliff to escape coastal erosion. The 850-tonne lighthouse was raised by hydraulic jacks and slid into position on tracks

— The 19th-century London Bridge was purchased in 1968 and shipped across the Atlantic to Arizona by an American entrepreneur. It now spans a canal and is surrounded by hotels and a British-themed amusement park

Sources: www.royal.gov.uk; International Association of Structural Movers

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