The Yusupovs were richer than the Romanovs. Five generations of the family held this palace on the Moika from 1830, when Boris Nikolayevich Yusupov bought it for 250,000 roubles in assignats, until 1917. The house was built by Vallin de la Mothe in the 1770s, and between 1830 and 1838 the architect Andrei Mikhailov rebuilt it into what you will see: enfilades of state rooms, the White Column Hall, the Moorish drawing room, a winter garden, and a private theatre in the baroque manner — with boxes, an orchestra pit and a stage on which Chaliapin and Liszt performed.
It is a rare case of a St Petersburg palace preserving not only its walls but its furnishings: the interiors came through both the revolution and the war almost unharmed.
And in the cellar of this house, on the night of 17 December 1916, Grigory Rasputin was murdered — the Siberian peasant who held his influence over the empress through his ability to ease the haemophilia attacks of the heir, Alexei. The conspiracy was formed by Prince Felix Yusupov, Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and the deputy Vladimir Purishkevich. Two months later the empire was gone.
The state rooms — the enfilade of reception rooms, the White Column Hall, the Moorish drawing room with its fountain and Arabic inscriptions, the Nicholas Hall, the tapestries, the winter garden. A palace in which the imperial family were received.
The private theatre — a miniature copy of an imperial theatre inside the house itself, in the rococo style: gold, painted decoration, velvet. Concerts are still given here.
The Murder of Rasputin exhibition — the basement dining room where it all began: wax figures, the original furnishings and documents. Your guide takes you through the evening of 16 December step by step — the cyanide cakes that failed to work, the shot, the chase across the courtyard, the body in the Malaya Nevka. And, separately, sorts out what is documented and what Yusupov invented in memoirs he rewrote more than once.
The Rasputin story has accumulated such a layer of myth that facts cannot be separated from legend without help: too much is known only from the words of his killers, and they contradict one another. Your guide shows where the documents end and the invention begins.
You will also hear what makes the rest of the house worth seeing as much as the cellar: where the Yusupov fortune came from and why a family curse was said to lie on it, under which only one heir in each generation lived to adulthood; how princes occupied themselves before television was invented, and why a theatre in your own house was not a luxury but a norm; and how Felix Yusupov lived on in Paris exile until 1967 and sued Hollywood over a film about himself.
An hour and a half, and the tour is private — your party only.
The prince’s private apartments may be visited for an additional charge.
The Yusupov Palace
| People | Price per person |
|---|---|
| 1 | $545 |
| 2 | $271 |
| 3 | $188 |
| 4 | $149 |
| 5 | $126 |
| 6 | $111 |
| 7 | $101 |
| 8 | $94 |
| People | Price per person |
|---|---|
| 9 | $88 |
| 10 | $84 |
| 11 | $80 |
| 12 | $77 |
| 13 | $74 |
| 14 | $72 |
| 15 | $71 |
| 16 | $69 |
The essentials of St Petersburg in three hours: Palace and Senate squares, the Summer Garden and the Field of Mars, the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island and the place the city began — told through stories rather than dates.
An hour along the rivers and canals with your own guide: the Venice of the North from the water, the bridges and their superstitions, Chizhik-Pyzhik, and the floods that reshaped the city.
Jewish St Petersburg: the Grand Choral Synagogue in the Moorish style, the history of the community in the imperial capital, its bankers and philanthropists — and how it lives today.
On foot through the imperial capital: Palace Square, Nevsky Prospect and Gostiny Dvor, the well-yards behind the grand facades, and doughnuts in a historic cafe — two hours through the heart of St Petersburg.
