One theory is that S. Solovev’s house, which was decorated with a row of symbols and mythical creatures, served as the inspiration for Margarita’s house. It’s possible that the description of Margarita’s house also absorbed features of I. Nekrasov’s house standing opposite.
As is the case with the Master’s house, the search for Margarita Nikolaevna’s house is a real puzzle, even for experienced researchers. At the moment, there are more than a dozen addresses for the famous Muscovite witch, some of which fit the territorial location, whereas others fit the external description. One of the most popular theories is that Margarita’s house was at 6 Maly Rzhevsky Lane in the famous house of Sergey Solovev. The house was built in 1920 in the Art Nouveau style and is now one of the most original in the capital. Solovev’s house is decorated with a multitude of images and symbols: owls and eagle owls, the four muses of the arts, Pallas Athena, the Chimera, a statue of a lion by the entrance and a bat on the post box. E. Bulgakova lived nearby in house 11.
Point on the map
This map shows where the address sits and how it is tied into the project routes.
Routes
This point belongs to one or more routes. Open them as sequential walks rather than isolated cards.
In the footsteps of the characters of The Master and Margarita
- Stop 10
- 5,52 km
- 4,5 h
Daily life in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s plays an important role in the multi-layered novel, The Master and Margarita — it is not simply a background for the fantastical events and the characters’ unusual adventures. The novel, addressed to Bulgakov’s contemporaries, describes the lives of Muscovites in detail, with the arguments arising in communal flats, the issue of flats, the spy scare, the invisible but tangible atmosphere of the Great Terror and so on. The events of the novel take over the entire centre of Moscow, and Bulgakov was almost always very precise in the details – the exceptions include only a few addresses (Margarita’s house, the Dramlit house, Stravinsky’s clinic etc.). Bulgakov’s contemporaries would easily recognize their city in the other details, had the novel been printed at that time. Since then, the city has changed a lot – some houses have been demolished, some have been rebuilt unrecognizably, but through the layers, it is possible to glimpse Bulgakov’s Moscow. Following in the footsteps of Bulgakov’s characters, you can feel Ivan Bezdomny’s horror after the death of Berlioz at Patriarch’s Ponds, his desperation in Herzen’s house, the scale of Satan’s ball in Spaso House, the eccentricity of Behemoth’s antics in the Torgsin on Arbat, and much more. The route begins at the Aquarium Garden, not far from Woland’s ‘unpleasant flat’, runs across Tverskoy Boulevard, takes in the lanes around Arbat and ends at the Alexandrovsky Garden, where Azazello and Margarita met.
Margarita’s houses
- Stop 3
- 5,6 km
- 1,30 h
In the novel The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov accurately depicts 1920s-1930s Moscow with all her side streets, squares, houses and gardens. Even now, after dozens of years, it is possible to take the book in one’s hands and walk around practically all of the significant places in the novel. However, a number of important addresses have remained a mystery to this day. One of these is the house that inspired the house in which Margarita lived before meeting the Master – it has still not been found. In the novel, ‘Margarita Nikolaevna and her husband occupied the entire upper floor of a beautiful house in a garden on one of the lanes near Arbat’. We also know that it was a gothic house. It seems simple – follow the free and independent Margarita’s movements and spot the right house. However, it turns out that in that very lane there is and never was a gothic house. \tIn our route guide, we have gathered all the possible addresses, which could have served as the basis for the house in the novel: the Military house in which E.S. Shilovskaya lived with her husband; Solovyev’s house five minutes’ walk from Elena Sergeevna’s house; K.F. Lazarev’s block of flats not far from Mikhail Bulgakov’s final flat; and others. You can walk around each of them and choose the one which you think is the most likely to have been Margarita’s.
