Excursion To Grigori Rasputin’s Apartment In St. Petersburg

64, the Gorokhovaya street in St. Petersburg is the final address of the «holy man» and the «holy devil» Grigori (Grigory) Efimovich Rasputin, a man whose life and activity left more questions than answers. A mystic, healer, peasant, «a friend of the Emperor», whose nickname is translated as «debauched one», left this flat on the evening of his murder which is as mysterious as his entire life. A visit here is a step in the history of Russia, a trip to the epoch which symbolizes the eve of the Russian Revolution 1917.

What’s In The Apartment?

Part of the apartment is now under reconstruction and modernization and even partially inhabited, with two rooms totally restored, including the study where Rasputin received numerous callers.

The walls of the flat still retain the memory of the great mysterious hypnotizer who was admired by many noble men and women he met despite his origin and reputation. Rasputin’s talents to convert almost everyone into his belief gained him an army of followers, primarily women.

A door handle attached to the door of the Rasputin’s apartment. While the apartment is filled with history, there are not so many authentic things left. The handle is one of them, and it can be the last thing Rasputin touched here before going to the Yusupov’s palace, where he was killed. Hope you are not superstitious.

The excursion is also hypnotizing, it captures your attention and mind, the atmosphere of the apartment takes you away to the times when the fate of Europe was at stake. A few authentic details can be found here which, if technologies had allowed this, would have revealed us fingertips of the «friend of the Tzar» as many contemporaries referred to him and as many our contemporaries still do.

Why Visit The Rasputin’s Flat?

The flat now is a place of occasional gatherings of Rasputin’s fans and followers, prayer services and meetings of historians. Crews from TV stations and reporters from all over the world are also often guests here as there is an increase in understanding that it’s impossible to capture why the events took this way without getting to know the personality of the famous and controversial monk, impossible to understand what was going on in the Russian Empire in the early XXth century, the course of events which led to the Bolshevik revolution, the coup that strongly affected the development of the whole world far beyond Russia’s boundaries.

The excursion is guided by one of the owners of the flat, an experienced guide. He will invite you to a ride in the time machine to get to the capital of Russia about a century ago. Based on memoirs, testimonies, history books, personal conversations and research, he will tell you about the personality of Grigori Rasputin, his relations with the Romanov family, his real influence on the processes in the country, myths surrounding the activity of the peasant, alliances, controversies, talks, workers’ strikes and many other things which filled in the atmosphere of Petrograd during the 1900s and 1910s.

You will know about:
• what happened to Rasputin’s children, where now live the offspring of one of the most mysterious and influential persons of the XXth century;
• did Rasputin really have such a power over the Tsar and Tsarina to dictate them his will regarding the choice of men to be appointed to top level positions in the government?
• what Rasputin was like in his day-to-day routine;
• which advices from Rasputin were eventually followed by the Emperor Nicolas II and which not;
• what were the relations between Rasputin and other big actors of the epoch;
• was Rasputin a holy man or a «debauched one»;
• did he do seduce the Tsarina Alexandra or not?

What’s important is that «I don’t have a text which I learn by heart and then retell to my guests», guide says. «My excursion is not a lecture or a lesson. I prefer to structure it depending on interests of the public. I can more focus on both Rasputin himself or social processes in the Russian Empire or historical anecdotes or key figures in the country and their roles and actions», says guide. «I’m not prone to repeat generally accepted myths about Rasputin and to pay great attention to his reportedly outrageous behavior. Maybe the image of Rasputin in my excursion will be some different from the one you have in your mind, but it is still based on facts which can be verified”.

Schedule Of Excursions To The Apartment Of Grigori Rasputin

Tours in English are made on Tuesday, Saturdays and Sundays (except 30th of December, the day of the murder of Rasputin), at 12.00 and 15.00. Other days are also possible, but upon approval by the guide.

Duration of the excursion: 1 – 1.5 hours.

How to book the excursion to the Rasputin’s apartment: email us guidetopetersburg@gmail.com
Please, write a number of visitors and the date you want to come.

Price of the excursion to Grigori Rasputin’s apartment

— Individual excursion (any date):
group 1 to 3 persons: 5600 rubles. Each extra person: 1000 rubles

— Kids under 14 free

Who Was Rasputin? Where Boney M Is Right And Where Not

We read a lot of stuff about Grigori Rasputin and can say that in the English speaking segment of the Internet there are almost no articles containing all known facts about the mystic from Siberia. The fullest article is the one from the Wikipedia, we’d also recommend this one.

We’ve written a couple of amazing stories about Rasputin in our list of real life weird stories which happened in St. Petersburg.

What we have found in our short research? We put it brief to leave the biggest part to the guide.

We think you know the world known disco hit by Boney M «Rasputin».
The lyrics say (or sing):

He was big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow
Most people looked at him with terror and with fear

These phrases are absolutely true. Ancestors of many residents of St. Petersburg lived in Petrograd (the name of St. Petersburg in 1914 – 1924) and met Rasputin in the streets. They said that the mad monk was really very powerful, filled with something we can describe as magnetism.

But to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear
He could preach the bible like a preacher
Full of ecstasy and fire
But he also was the kind of teacher
Women would desire.

Again true, Rasputin’s popularity among noble women is not exaggerated. “Full of ecstasy and fire” is what most his contemporaries noted in their memoirs.

Lover of the Russian queen

Well, there were a lot of rumors in the air about it, a word spread in different circles of the Russian society, but no – no evidence exists that Rasputin had sex with Tsarina and any noble woman.

He ruled the Russian land and never mind the czar
But the cassock he danced really wunderbar.

Nope, his influence on state affairs seems to have been strongly exaggerated. Note that it was a very complicated time with a great amount of actors involved in making key decisions, and now it’s difficult to understand why one or another step was made.

For the queen he was no wheeler dealer
Though she’d heard the things he’d done
She believed he was a holy healer
Who would heal her son

Yes, Rasputin really healed Tsarevich Alexey (a crown prince of the Russian Empire), who suffered from hemophilia and the Tsarina didn’t want to believe any information about Rasputin’s behavior who would drink a lot of wine and pray while having sex with an occasional woman, thus cheating on his wife.

But when his drinking and lusting and his hunger
For power became known to more and more people
The demands to do something about this outrageous
Man became louder and louder

That’s true except the «hunger for power». Fear and loath were expressed by most noble men. The aristocracy hated Rasputin, they could not understand the reason why a dirty and malicious peasant was so close to the royal family. As Russian historians note, the aristocracy as well as the rest of the people were not aware of the Tsarevich’s disease, a secret which had been understandably strongly kept. So their outrage was also understandable. Coupled with severe crises in domestic and foreign policy, amplified by regular peasant uprisings (they are little known since they are studied little even at Russian schools), defeats in the World War I, mass desertion of Russian soldiers (primarily peasants), lack of food in cities and ammunition for troops, the figure of Rasputin was the symbol of decay and degeneration. Rasputin’s unexplained closeness to the Romanovs made him a target to be accused of all Russian misfortunes and disasters.

Then one night some men of higher standing
Set a trap, they’re not to blame
Come to visit us they kept demanding
And he really came <….>
They put some poison into his wine <…>
He drank it all and said, I feel fine <…>
They didn’t quit, they wanted his head <…>

And so they shot him ’til he was dead

The circumstances of Rasputin’s murder are well known, there is not much intrigue to it. The only thing that’s still being disputed is who really made fatal shots, Prince Felix Yusupov or Grand Duke Dmitri Romanov. We think that it was Romanov, whose fatal involvement was covered by his fellow murderers as this could cast a shadow over the country’s ruling dynasty.

Though the dynasty stayed in power for only two months after Rasputin had been killed – a fact that had been predicted by Rasputin himself in his letter to the Tsar Nicolas II of Russia.

And that’s not the only prediction by faith healer that has eventually come true…