From Kozhevennaya Line (Kozhevennaya liniya) the Brusnitsyn Mansion looks like an old yellow house behind a peeling wall. Inside are some of the most lavish merchant interiors in St Petersburg: a drawing room of gilded plasterwork under a huge chandelier, a Moorish-style smoking room, a grand staircase with caryatids. There is no walk-in entry, but tours run almost every day — a good plan for an autumn day when you would rather look at something unusual indoors than get soaked on the embankment.
On 19 October 2026 we checked the tour operator's website, Yandex Maps and the website of the Brusnitsyn cultural quarter for how to get inside, what a ticket costs and which days have tours, who is not admitted, how to get there from the metro and what to see nearby. Schedules and prices change from week to week, so check your date before you go. Tours are in Russian; the operator's site does not mention English-language tours.
✨ Inside: gilt, plasterwork and fireplaces
The state rooms are the reason to come. The drawing room is covered in gilded carving and plasterwork, with a chandelier of dozens of candle-style bulbs. In the neighbouring rooms white stucco covers the walls and ceilings, and marble fireplaces and mirrored niches survive. The tour operator describes the décor as "in the spirit of Russian eclecticism" — the mix of historic styles that wealthy clients loved in the late 19th century.
A room with white stucco, a chandelier and a fireplace — Photo: Pavel Kirillov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Be clear about what you are visiting: this is not a restored palace museum with display cases and carpet runners, but a historic house where some interiors survived and others are still waiting their turn. That is why the operator asks visitors to wear comfortable shoes — no heels, no evening dresses.
🕌 The Moorish smoking room and the "Dracula's mirror" legend
The most photographed room in the house is the Moorish-style smoking room. The ceiling is a star-shaped oriental pattern in blue and gold, the walls are covered in carving, and in the centre hangs a lantern-chandelier with painted oriental glass. Such "eastern" smoking rooms were fashionable in St Petersburg mansions at the end of the 19th century.
The ceiling of the Moorish-style smoking room — Photo: Pavel Kirillov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
The mansion has its own urban legend, "Dracula's mirror": supposedly a mirror somehow linked to the Romanian count is kept in the house, and people who looked into it vanished. It is exactly that — a legend. No documents link the mansion's mirrors to Dracula; the story lives mostly in retellings and a detective novel. A guide may tell it as part of the house's atmosphere, but come for the interiors, not the mystery.
🏭 Who the Brusnitsyns were and why the house stands by a factory
According to the Brusnitsyn cultural quarter, Nikolai Mokeyevich Brusnitsyn came to St Petersburg from Tver Province and in 1847 opened a small tannery on Vasilyevsky Island with ten workers. It grew into a factory with 600 employees, and by the end of the 19th century "N. M. Brusnitsyn and Sons" was the largest leather business in the city.
The family lived next to the works. The mansion at 27 Kozhevennaya Line got its present look in the 1880s, when the founder's three sons rebuilt their parents' house. In Soviet times it housed the factory management, which is why part of the interiors survived.
The façade of the Brusnitsyn Mansion on Kozhevennaya Line, photographed in 2016 — Photo: Ekaterina Borisova, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
🎟 Getting inside: tours, prices, booking
Tours are run by the operator O!sobnyak, whose website is listed on the mansion's Yandex Maps page. The standard tour lasts one hour. Tickets are sold online on the operator's site, with tours on a fixed schedule: over the next two weeks there are two to six a day, between 10:00 and 19:30, with no tours on Monday 26 October.
Prices on the schedule as of 19 October 2026: 2,200 roubles on weekdays, 2,300 on Fridays and 2,400 on Saturdays and Sundays. Some slots, such as the last one on Sunday, cost 1,900. For groups of more than four the operator asks you to book by phone, and a private tour can be arranged for any day on request.
The grand staircase with caryatids and a marble fireplace — Photo: Pavel Kirillov, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
The operator's refund terms: 100% back 10 or more days before the tour, 50% at 9–5 days, 30% at 4–3 days. The mansion also hosts photo shoots in the interiors; these are booked separately, and food and drink are not allowed during a shoot.
