Lenin’s wife’s family lived in this apartment-turned-museum and VIadimir Ilyich himself laid low here before the revolution while organising the workers. The delightful turn-of-the-20th-century fittings have been preserved intact, including a telephone that still bears Lenin’s home phone number. By the look of things, Lenin had a very bourgeois time of it.
The apartment building, which is known locally as the ‘boat house’ due to its external similarities to a large cruise liner, was built in 1913 at the height of St Petersburg’s lust for Style Moderne. After finding the entrance, head up the stairs to the 3rd floor to be buzzed in.