The Bak House (Dom Baka) at 24 Kirochnaya Street is the courtyard where covered, windowed bridge-galleries span the light well at upper-floor level. Its photos turn up in every list of "the most unusual courtyards in St Petersburg", and in late October, when it gets dark early and a short walk near the metro is just right, plenty of people head here. The catch is that it is a residential building: visitors usually cannot get into the courtyard with the galleries, and it is better to know that before you go.
On 19 October 2026 we checked Yandex Maps, the Encyclopaedia of St Petersburg and the Suvorov Museum website for what is known about the house and whether you can enter the courtyard, which apartment houses nearby you can look at without an intercom, and where on the same stretch of Kirochnaya you can actually go inside with a ticket. Check prices and opening hours again before you set out.
🌉 Galleries over the light well: why the Bak House is famous
Yandex Maps lists the building as a landmark, the "Apartment House of Yu. B. Bak", rated 4.8 from almost one and a half thousand ratings — a lot for a block of flats. It is famous not for its street façade but for its inside: the inner courtyard-well (dvor-kolodets) crossed at different levels by enclosed galleries with rows of windows. They link parts of the building and turn an ordinary light well into something like a stage set — that is the view on the cover.
Inside, the stairwells keep stone staircases with wrought-iron banisters and stained glass with flowing plant motifs — the recognisable language of Art Nouveau (in Russia, "modern"), when even a staircase window in a rental building was designed as a piece of art.
Stained glass with a plant pattern in a stairwell of the Bak House, 24 Kirochnaya Street — Photo: Artyom Svetlov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
🔒 Can you get in? The honest answer about the gate and the intercom
No, there is no public access, and we found no official courtyard tours confirmed by the building or by the city. In reviews on Yandex Maps visitors write that the courtyard with the galleries is the second one, its gate is padlocked, and residents have put up a notice saying photo shoots are not welcome. Some suggest waiting for a resident and walking in with them — please don't.
Why it matters: people live here, and for years a stream of visitors has come for the same shot. A locked gate is the residents' decision, not an invitation to try your luck. If nobody opens it, that is the answer. You can look at the façade from the street at your leisure and see the galleries and stained glass in photos like the ones in this article. We covered courtyard etiquette in general in our piece on St Petersburg's courtyard-wells.
🕌 The Muruzi House: a Moorish façade and "A Room and a Half"
The short walk is easiest to start at 24 Liteyny Prospekt, a few minutes on foot from Kirochnaya. According to the Encyclopaedia of St Petersburg, the Muruzi House is a five-storey apartment house built in 1874–1877 by the architect Alexander Serebryakov with Pyotr Shestov and Nikolai Sultanov for Prince Alexander Muruzi. The façades are in the "Moorish" style: arched windows, carved ornament, balconies on brackets.
The Muruzi House on the corner of Liteyny Prospekt, November 2022 — Photo: Aleksandrovy AG, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
From 1889 to 1913 the writers Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius and Dmitry Filosofov lived here; in 1921, on Nikolai Gumilyov's initiative, the "House of Poets" was founded in the building; and from 1949 to 1972 Joseph Brodsky lived in communal flat No. 28. It is now the museum Poltory Komnaty ("A Room and a Half"); according to Yandex Maps the entrance is from 14 Korolenko Street, not from Liteyny. How to visit it and other writers' flats is in our guide to St Petersburg's apartment museums.
🏛 32–34 Kirochnaya: an arch that opens the courtyard to the street
From the Bak House it is a couple of minutes east. The Ratkov-Rozhnov Apartment House at 32–34 Kirochnaya is 299 metres from Chernyshevskaya metro according to Yandex Maps. The Encyclopaedia of St Petersburg says houses 32 and 34 were built by the architect Pavel Suzor for the businessman Anany Ratkov-Rozhnov (between 1881 and 1900), and its article on Suzor adds that in the Ratkov-Rozhnov houses here and on Pestelya Street courtyards were for the first time opened to the street through giant arches.
That is what makes it such a contrast to the Bak House: here the courtyard was designed as part of the street, and the arch flanked by female figures is easy to see right from the pavement. Suzor is the same architect who built the Singer Company building on Nevsky Prospekt, today's Dom Knigi bookshop.
The giant arch with figures on the façade of the Ratkov-Rozhnov House, 32–34 Kirochnaya — Photo: GAlexandrova, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
