A must-visit!
What’s most amazing is that this place is captivating not only because the writer Sergei Dovlatov once lived here — it’s a true time capsule, a chronicle of communal life. The guide spoke about the fates of the apartment’s residents (the St. Petersburg artist Tatyana Mileant) and about the grandmother. You can not only see authentic objects from the 19th and 20th centuries, but also touch them. Absolutely fascinating and engaging! Wishing prosperity to the project and gratitude to its organizers!

We recently visited the Dovlatov Apartment Museum, and it was an astonishing immersion into the world of one of the most brilliant writers of the 20th century. The uniqueness of the project is truly striking — every detail, every exhibit here is imbued with the spirit of the time and with Dovlatov’s own personality!
What makes it even more remarkable is that this is still a living communal apartment, with several rooms set aside for the museum. That makes it genuinely one of a kind. The creators of the museum have done a tremendous job of recreating the atmosphere in which the writer lived and worked. The attention to detail is breathtaking: from furniture and everyday objects to personal belongings and documents. Even the old house registers of that era were carefully reconstructed by the museum’s founders with their own hands.
All of this builds an astonishingly vivid picture that allows you to see Dovlatov’s work in a new light. We learned many fascinating facts about his family, his neighbors, and everyday life of those times.
Special thanks to the museum staff for their professionalism and passion! It’s clear that this project is fueled not only by immense effort but also by a piece of each heart that contributed to its creation. I recommend it to everyone who is interested in Dovlatov’s legacy or simply loves unusual museums. This place will certainly leave a deep mark on your soul and broaden your perspective on a great writer.
And thank you to Alexey for the tour — for his dedication and for the way he brought to life both the era and the writer himself!

In terms of historical uniqueness, this place doesn’t hold that much — there are no original belongings of the writer himself. The room is filled with objects from that era. Along with Dovlatov’s room, we also visited two other rooms in the same apartment as part of one tour — one belonged to a Leningrad-born ordinary woman, and the third was the tiny studio of an artist. In fact, those rooms contained more authentic exhibits.
Still, if you combine a visit to the writer’s apartment with tours of other communal flats in the center of St. Petersburg, especially with a good guide, you’ll have a wonderful time. We booked the tour on the Dovlatov Museum website and ended up visiting three communal apartments in total. It was very interesting to learn about this side of St. Petersburg’s past and present communal life.
Many thanks to our guide Vladislav!

We visited as part of a tour of St. Petersburg’s communal apartments, and this flat was one of the three stops on the route. It’s worth noting right away that it’s hard to describe it strictly as a Dovlatov Museum, since very little connected directly to him has been preserved here. That’s not the fault of the organizers: after the Dovlatov family moved out, the rooms changed tenants many times before reaching the museum’s founders — a fact you’ll also learn on the tour.
Because of this, the team has truly done an incredible job of restoring the space, and they deserve great respect for that. Still, if you come looking only for Dovlatov himself, you may find the experience a bit disappointing — something to keep in mind.
The other two apartments included in the tour were, in essence, a little less compelling in terms of content, but our guide Andrey managed to present them in such an engaging and vivid way — huge thanks to him!
If you’re curious about the history and everyday life of St. Petersburg’s communal flats, you’ll definitely enjoy this experience!

Dedicated to all lovers of Dovlatov and that unmistakable Petersburg spirit! A tour through several communal flats — an evolution of the communal world, so to speak. The impressions are vivid, the interiors unforgettable; afterwards, you feel inspired to write ironic short stories — and to get beautifully, artistically drunk. 🍻

An excellent tour. You learn a great deal about how people once lived — and still live — in St. Petersburg’s communal apartments. I was especially impressed by the "barin's" apartment. I highly recommend both the tour and our guide Alexey: he tells the stories in a captivating way, patiently answers questions, and leads the excursion with humor, never in a banal manner.
Thank you once again for the new knowledge and impressions!

In addition to Dovlatov’s apartment, this is a sightseeing tour that takes you through several other communal flats as well as the courtyards of St. Petersburg’s old income houses. Our guide Maria was wonderful. You won’t necessarily learn anything new about the writer himself, but you will see his apartment, sit on that very trunk, and imagine yourself as a guest there.
If you enjoy atmospheric walks around the city, this tour will leave you with a delightful impression.

A wonderful opportunity to step into Sergei Donatovich’s era, to see and even touch the objects that once surrounded the writer. It is a little sad that so few belongings from his lifetime have been preserved, but one must remember that recognition came to him much later.

Our decision to visit the communal flats was spontaneous, but we didn’t regret it for a moment. Our guide, Vladislav, led us along the route "Communal Apartments of St. Petersburg and the Room of Sergei Dovlatov." It’s a joy to meet someone so genuinely in love with their work. Vladislav told us about everyday life, about the personalities who lived there, and about the peculiarities of the era when people were resettled into communal flats. He spoke about Dovlatov’s life and even quoted him.
It was an enlightening tour. After seeing the rundown room, you realize how well we live today — even far from the cultural capital.

Many thanks to Alexey for a truly high-quality and engaging tour. I enjoyed everything: the organization, the content, the way the material was presented, Alexey’s knowledge and competence, and the overall atmosphere.

I wish both you personally and the organizers to expand the geography of these tours while keeping their quality at the same high level. I recommend this experience to everyone interested in the unvarnished, everyday side of beautiful St. Petersburg.

We joined the tour on August 26, 2025, and were absolutely delighted! The excursion was both fascinating and educational, and the vivid atmosphere of the communal apartment left a strong impression. Our guide Andrey was a gem — so passionate and engaging in his storytelling, and it’s clear he truly loves his work and knows the history inside out.
I wholeheartedly recommend a visit — you definitely won’t remain indifferent! Even simply witnessing that people still live in such conditions today, and gaining a sense of their difficult everyday life, is reason enough to experience this tour.

Everything here is absolutely fascinating! It’s all so authentic, captivating, and full of atmosphere. This exhibition can be visited countless times — like the Hermitage — and each time you’ll notice some new detail you hadn’t seen before.
The tour evokes uniquely delightful emotions, unlike anything else. I highly recommend visiting!

An excellent tour. Our guide Alexey was like a modern-day Virgil — first casting us down into the hell of a poor communal flat, neglected even by its own residents, and then raising us up to the grandeur of Dovlatov and the splendor of a wealthy apartment with stuccoed ceilings and parquet floors.
St. Petersburg is a city of contrasts, and its communal apartments illustrate this brilliantly.

An excellent tour! It gives a full picture of life in the communal flats. You come away with a new appreciation for what you have today. Everything was well organized and on time, and the guide shared many interesting nuances.
Highly recommended!

Dovlatov is a legend!
I adore his books, I adore him. Take this tour — you won’t regret it, everything turned out amazing! We visited four apartments in different buildings and saw how people actually live. The atmosphere was incredible 🤪🤪🤪
The only major downside — none of the original things from Sergei’s time have survived. But still — thank you, St. Petersburg!

You can only enter the apartment with a guided tour — and it’s absolutely worth it! Don’t miss it! There are so many objects of Soviet everyday life, and what’s striking is that you can touch and even move things around. I think they intentionally tried to capture the true spirit of the communal flat — the "disgusting communal apartment," as Dovlatov himself wrote.
And it really is fascinating — someone wasn’t afraid to do this, to show how people genuinely lived. We were delighted with this place — those polished, prettified museum-apartments with neatly sterilized displays have become tiresome. This one feels real. 😜😃

If you visit with a guided tour, you’ll enjoy it. The apartment is full of character. In addition to Dovlatov’s room, there are two other very interesting rooms. The communal flat itself is still lived in — the remaining four rooms are home to residents.

Thank you for the tour! We explored three rooms in the apartment where Sergei Dovlatov once lived. The guide told us about the lives of the writer and his neighbors — the St. Petersburg artist Tatyana Mileant and the grandmother.

A very beautiful and aesthetically rich place. It was a pleasure to listen to the tour: the guide at the Dovlatov Festival was very knowledgeable and shared a wealth of fascinating facts about the writer’s life.