Tolstoy House

The Tolstoy House is the most well-known apartment building in St. Petersburg, located at 15-17 Rubinstein Street and 54 Fontanka Embankment. The building was constructed in 1910–1912 under the aegis of Major-General Count Mikhail Pavlovich Tolstoy, nephew of the 1812 war hero P. A. Tolstoy. The architect Fyodor Lidval designed it in Nordic Art Nouveau. The construction is interesting for its inner street with three connected yards where the facades were decorated as richly as the front ones. Three-storey arches leading to the inner street are the architectural dominants of the compositions.

After Tolstoy's death in 1913, ownership passed to his widow Countess Olga Tolstoy. For a century of its history, the building hosted numerous famous residents.