The Muruzi House on the corner of Liteyny and Pestelya is one of St Petersburg's best-known apartment blocks: a Moorish facade, bay windows, and a literary history running from Merezhkovsky to Brodsky. The Brodskys lived here in a communal flat on the second floor from 1955; the poet had half a room partitioned off with wardrobes — hence the essay "A Room and a Half". In 2020 a museum opened in those rooms, and getting in is a task in itself: admission is by timed slot for a handful of people.
The Muruzi House, a Moorish facade on the corner of Liteyny and Pestelya. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The Muruzi House
Built in the 1870s for Prince Alexander Muruzi in a Moorish style rare for the city. According to the museum, Merezhkovsky and Gippius lived here, Blok visited, and from the 1950s to the 1970s the Brodsky family occupied the second-floor flat. Look at the facade with its bays and oriental ornament before going in.
How "a room and a half" became a museum
After the poet's parents died the flat remained communal, and buying the rooms took years because some neighbours refused to sell. The museum was created by private founders with foundation support; in 2020 the first part opened in the neighbouring flat, with access to the Brodskys' rooms. The entrance is now at 14 Korolenko Street.
The entrance is from Korolenko Street, through the neighbouring flat. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Inside
The Brodskys' rooms are left empty: mouldings, high ceilings, windows onto Liteyny, the stove, the marks where the wardrobes stood. Almost nothing of the family's belongings survives — they were dispersed after the emigration — and the museum chose not to install replicas. Instead there is sound, passages of the essay on the walls, photographs. It is a space for reading rather than looking.
The rooms are left empty, without furniture or replicas. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The neighbouring flat holds the exhibition: biography, Leningrad of the 1960s, the trial and exile, emigration, the Nobel Prize, plus a small bookshop and a lecture space.
The exhibition in the neighbouring flat covers the life and the era. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
