Well, who among those who want to plunge into the secrets of Peter does not know this cherished phrase - Rotunda on Gorokhovaya ?! Lovers of mysticism, occultism, fascinated by black magic - the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya - there is no more sacred place than this concentration of forces. Boris Grebenshchikov, Alexander Bashlachev, Yanka Diaghileva, Svyatoslav Zaderiy, Yegor Letov, Andrey Panov, Yuri Shevchuk, and Konstantin Kinchev and Viktor Tsoi were regulars of the party in the Rotunda - the names that I listed are very famous people, they have achieved a lot - the magic of the Rotunda helped them (but keep in mind most of them are already dead). But not everything is so simple friends, it is impossible to find the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya - she is not there …
Rotunda on Gorokhovaya
“These are the times! - the sophisticated reader will say - how is she not there? And the famous address - Gorokhovaya street, house number 57? Anyway, hundreds of people come there, the entire Internet is filled with photographs of the famous Rotunda, journalists come, shoot, show on TV … And you - "She's not there!" It just so happened - There is no Rotunda on Gorokhovaya. But, however, this toponym turned out to be so tenacious and so tightly entered the lexicon of St. Petersburg residents that even I, paraphrasing the classics, “knowing in advance about its absence there” - all the same, always, I use the phrase: “Rotunda on Gorokhovaya”.
Have I confused you? Okay, let's try to figure it out in order.
Rotunda on Gorokhovaya, how to get there - the nearest metro stations are Pushkinskaya metro stations and Sennaya square metro stations. I usually go to Pushkinskaya, leave it, turn right, cross Pidezdnaya lane, walk a little forward along Zagorodny Prospekt, the first street on the left will be Gorokhovaya Street. I turn onto it, 10 minutes walk to Semyonovsky bridge. I stop at the bridge. I admire the Fontanka, on the left, the blue domes of the Izmailovskaya Church, smoke, look at the green building of the Rotunda decorated with a portico with columns, cross the bridge, cross the Fontanka embankment - admire the sign of the Rotunda bar on Gorokhovaya, and after the signboard the gateway leading to the courtyard of the Rotunda - that's it. If it is more convenient for you, you can get to the Sennaya Ploschad metro station, get out of the metro, cross the square, turn right on Sadovaya street, walk along it,Without turning anywhere to Gorokhovaya, turn right - 10 minutes walk and you are at the entrance to the gateway of the Rotunda courtyard. If you don't care how to go, then I recommend the way through the Pushkinskaya metro station, you can calmly stand on the Semyonovsky bridge and admire the excellent landscape - on one side of you there will be cornflower-blue domes of the Izmailovsky Cathedral, on the other, miss the nondescript Leshtukov bridge, the famous Lomonosov bridge with turrets and chains and, of course, the unforgettable surface of the Fontanka.the famous Lomonosov bridge with turrets and chains and, of course, the unforgettable surface of the Fontanka.the famous Lomonosov bridge with turrets and chains and, of course, the unforgettable surface of the Fontanka.
But the address of the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya, hmm … - for tourists unfamiliar with St. Petersburg, the mystic begins from the moment of searching for the address of the Rotunda. The fact is that, in fact, there are two Rotundas on Gorokhovaya Street in St. Petersburg …
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Where did this confusion come from? Let's try to figure it out.
Well, firstly, those who want to get into the Rotunda, as a rule, make a rather big mistake - they are trying to find a round building on the map. And they find it, and on Gorokhovaya, but at the same time they forget that we are not talking about a rotunda building, but about a historical place, a pearl of St. written with a capital letter).
So let's turn from Zagorodny Prospect to Gorokhovaya Street and walk a little along it. We will slowly walk along it, looking around the houses around us, and reach the Semyonovsky bridge. Stop! - stop number 1. The intersection of the Fontanka embankment and Gorokhovaya street near the Semyonovsky bridge, together with three horseshoe-shaped buildings (house No. 52 on Gorokhovaya, house No. 3A on Fontanka and house No. 92 on the Fontanka embankment) forms a square, which is called Semyonovskaya square (named after the Semyonovsky Life Guards regiment that was stationed here).
Fontanka Embankment, house 92. Here we turn into an arch under the balcony and see …
… a rotunda building (popular name is a ring house).
This building is also not on Gorokhovaya Street, its address is the Fontanka River Embankment, house # 92B, and it is also surrounded by an aura of mysticism and a touch of mystery, but this is not the purpose of our excursion. Let's leave this courtyard, go out into the street, cross it, go to the Semyonovsky bridge and look at the opposite bank of the Fontanka. And here we will see the very building of the Rotunda. And his address: Fontanka embankment, house number 81.
Yes, but where did the well-known address Gorokhovaya No. 57 (more precisely 57A) come from? By the way, we will need this address soon. Everything is very simple - the entrance to the Rotunda is possible only from the courtyard, but to get into this courtyard we need to go through the gateway of house No. 57 on Gorokhovaya Street - so one address superimposed on another. For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that this house has the shape of the letter "G" in plan, the front of the house is located along the Fontanka, but the side of the house, its right wing, is located along Gorokhovaya Street and has a house number - 57. Therefore, sometimes its number is indicated as Gorokhovaya 57/81, which is also wrong, but these are trifles, the main thing - remember: the Rotunda is located on the Fontanka (if you look at the plan of the house, you will see that the Rotunda room is located just in the front of the house along the Fontanka embankment,and not in the building attached later on Gorokhovaya Street). Generalizing all of the above, I will summarize - both rotundas are located on the Fontanka, and not on Gorokhovaya, although one can safely say - "in the Gorokhovaya area."
Here it is, that very famous Rotunda on Gorokhovaya.
One of the key places of the St. Petersburg looking glass, the magic of which protects the city, it is absolutely unique - here you can easily meet Satan. But be always careful here - they say one company celebrated the final exams in the Rotunda at night, one young man from this company went down to the basement, and 15 minutes later came out of there as a 70-year-old man - in 15 minutes he aged 50 years. Nobody knows what happened, he didn't tell anyone, he just went crazy. They say the Rotunda allows you to enter another dimension.
The hocus-pocus here is that the form and content of this building are very different. Outside, it is an ordinary facade in the style of early classicism, of which there are many in the Northern capital, but behind the front door is a real architectural gem. Behind the walls, Yakovlev's tenement house hides marble columns, openwork spiral staircases more suitable for a medieval castle, arches, or rather arched ceilings and a dome serving as an antithesis to the domes of Christian churches. This staircase, called the Rotunda, clearly does not fit into the look of an ordinary residential building, it is saturated with mysticism and legends.
And now, riddle number one. From the architectural point of view, the Rotunda is just the entrance of the house, but why is it needed here? There are no apartments on the first floor, there is no second floor at all, there are only three apartments on the third floor - the very appearance emphasizes its purpose for a certain ritual. This feeling is heightened by the left spiral staircase that leads to nowhere. Just like that, to nowhere - starting from the straight march of the first floor, it reaches the level of a non-existent second floor and just ends …
Second riddle. You all know that under Soviet rule, all buildings were reconstructed, rebuilt to meet the needs of the new time, altered, or simply demolished, and here the opposite process took place - the Rotunda building was returned to its original appearance, such as it was according to the project at the end of construction - in the middle of the 19th century, this building was changed. During the Soviet era, the Rotunda building was restored to its original form. Why is a mystery, perhaps the magic of the Rotunda could even influence the Soviet regime.
Another mystery, pay attention to the steps of the stairs (detailed photos of the Rotunda and photos of its interior on the following pages) - they are clearly not for the nobility's feet. And not even for the feet of rich residents. A simple cast iron spiral staircase in a luxurious architectural setting. What for? By the way, the answer to this question is simple - the steps of the stairs are drilled and through them you can see everything that happens below. But why it was necessary is a big question.
In general, in terms of its functionality, this is not even a front door (you will also see it later), this is a usual “back door” for cooks, servants and other servants, but why they needed to build such luxury combined with mysterious artifacts is not a question, but a very big question.
Another interesting artifact of the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya is a huge iron hatch on the first floor, located right in the middle of the stairs. There is a legend that already in our time, one of the nights, he split by himself with a pentagram. And, by the way, this is not a legend, but a real fact - such an event took place in the history of this mysterious place. It cracked from corrosion caused by time, but what is interesting, when the cracked hatch was examined, they found artificial caverns located in the form of a pentagram along which a split occurred. Why they were made is a mystery, just as a mystery is why this hatch is located here - the adit under it is filled with concrete, either that the curious would not climb, or to close the entrance to another dimension. According to one version, initially, this mine served as a secret descent to the Fontanka,on the other it was a well for water intake - as in a medieval castle.
Speaking about the protective function of the Rotunda, it is worth mentioning the fact that there are several rotunda buildings in St. Petersburg. There is a rotunda on Sennaya Square, there is a rotunda on Vasilievsky Island, you saw another Fontanka rotunda above (I don’t remember everything now, then I’ll wander around, take pictures and show them). So, if you take a map and connect all the rotundas of St. Petersburg with straight lines, then you will get a true pentagram - a sign of tremendous magical power, akin to the magical symbol that is formed by the walls of the Peter and Paul Fortress (a true pentagram is not just a pentagon, but a pentagon intersected inside, from the corners, by straight lines forming a pentagonal star - that is, a pentagram embedded in a pentagram, and there should be 10 rotundas in total [!]). But if the main goal of Petropavlovka is the protection of a sacred artifact, a treasure hidden behind its walls,then the magic shield created by the rotunda protects the entire city (within the boundaries of that time, of course). But then - rotunda buildings, but the center of intersection of all these lines will be the Rotunda staircase on Gorokhovaya, which is why it is the key Rotunda - the concentration of forces. Hence the unofficial name of the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya - "Center of the Universe" (in fact, it has many unofficial names, but more on that later).
Lost rotunda
If you set out to walk around St. Petersburg, map all the rotunda buildings and connect them with lines, you will be surprised to find that one rotunda is missing. Sometimes this riddle baffles even professional ethnographers. It is often called that - the lost rotunda. It seems to be located in the area of Senate Square or St. Isaac's Square (sometimes they indicate the rotunda hall of the Mariinsky Palace - the indication of the rotunda room is extremely incorrect, although there really is one there, the fact is that rotundas were at that time a rather fashionable element of architecture and were they are in very many palaces and mansions of the Petersburg nobility, and if you connect lines not rotunda buildings, but rotunda rooms, then instead of a pentagram you will get something resembling a constellation map, but it should be noted that, since any rotunda,is the heiress of ancient temples, any of them is shrouded in a kind of aura of mysticism, but only the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya possesses such power that it is called the Center of the Universe, and when speaking about it they use the expression “she is the only one like that”), but she is not there, no matter how you look. Some believe that it was demolished during the Soviet era. Nobody demolished it, and the answer is simple - the lost rotunda is not a round building, but part of the building and the place is very famous and famous - it is called St. Isaac's Cathedral. The fact is that the observation deck of Isaac is also a rotunda - as you can see, it is camouflaged quite cunningly, and the building of Isaac's Cathedral itself, or rather the rotunda bearing its dome, played a huge role in protecting the city during the Great Patriotic War and the Blockade - it really is, in fact, protected all nearby buildings and monuments,but this is a topic for a separate conversation, and I will tell you how it happened later, telling you about this amazing St. Petersburg church.
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It is worth noting here the fact that after changing a number of owners, at the beginning of the 19th century this house passed into the possession of Count Andrei Zubov (according to other sources, he was not the owner, but simply rented either rooms or the whole house), who was a famous freemason. According to legend, it was here, in the Rotunda, in the basement, that initiates were accepted into Masons. But the fact is that the Rotunda was not built under Zubov, and if Count Zubov really used it for mystical rituals, then he used other people's work. It was so or not, but they say … One interesting fact - earlier, immediately after construction, the walls of the Rotunda were painted with Masonic symbols (it was at that time in St. Petersburg, then, the fashion for such patterns and drawings), but now they are completely lost …
In general, the main legend on Gorokhovaya is the legend of the fulfillment of desires - if you write a wish on the wall of the Rotunda, it will certainly come true. And also, in St. Petersburg there is a legend that the Devil descends to Petersburg just along the stairs of the Rotunda, and if you come here with any request to him at midnight, Satan will definitely respond to it, for the first time this legend was recorded in writing by Pushkin (Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was a frequent visitor to the Rotunda). Therefore, the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya has another unofficial name - the Devil's Ladder or Satan's Ladder. In this legend, the St. Petersburg interpretation of the appearance of Satan in the world is very interesting. Here the principle of mirror reflections is triggered by which the whole of Peter is literally saturated - according to the logic, Satan should leave the underworld, that is, CLIMB up the stairs, and here he DECREASES,that is, the Prince of this World comes to us from Heaven, - there is a mirror image of the events described in canonical Christian literature. Peter is a mirror and this is most clearly seen on the basis of the legend about the mirror doubles of Nevsky Prospekt (if a person is born on one side of Nevsky Prospekt, then on the other side at that moment another person must die, he has such a property, but this is a topic for a separate story) and in the mirror image of the street of Architect Rossi.he has such a property, but this is a topic for a separate story) and in the mirror image of the street of the Architect Rossi.he has such a property, but this is a topic for a separate story) and in the mirror image of the street of the Architect Rossi.
But this legend also has another aspect. Satan has been called by many names, and one of them is Antichrist. But the schismatics (Old Believers), and simply dissatisfied with the policy of Perth Alekseevich (of whom there were a lot), Peter the Great was called the Antichrist - a well-known fact. As well as the legend is known that Peter the First did not die, but simply fell asleep. So maybe it is Peter the Great descending from Heaven along this staircase to help the one who turns to him? … Maybe this mysterious portal was created for him by the name of the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya? …
The legend of turning to Satan with requests in the Rotunda has real confirmation. So, for example, one of the St. Petersburg local historians of the 19th century described the following case: “a certain young girl, in the late 40s of the 19th century, turned to the Antichrist in the Rotunda with a request to punish the man she loved, but who did not reciprocate. And Satan responded to the victim of unhappy love, - the next morning after talking with the Evil One, her beloved man, who rejected her love, was found dead in bed without any signs of violent death. According to some reports, at the end of the nineteenth, at the beginning of the twentieth century, there was a dance school in the Rotunda, Martsinkevich's dance class, with a very ill fame - simply, they say,there was a brothel disguised as a dance school and it seems like one of the parishioners of prostitutes fell in love with one of the rich clients who rejected her love, which caused her to turn to Satan. According to other sources, there was an ordinary cafe-shantan, according to third sources, there was a cafe-shantan and Martsinkevich's dance class at the same time. I don’t know what about the residents of the city, but among the residents of the city this place was very badly known …
They say that Rasputin's reception was in the Rotunda, and an underground passage was dug from the basement of the Rotunda to his apartment. Brad, there was no Rasputin's office here. I'm not at all sure that Grigory Rasputin has been here, but if there was once a brothel here, then it is quite possible … he just lived nearby, across the Fontanka, along Gorokhovaya street in house number 64, so this legend arose. In Soviet times, the legend about the underground passage was transformed and he began to lead from the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya, now to the Smolny, now to the Winter Palace. Another version says that the underground passage leads to the Vitebsk railway station. In fact, this legend, like all myths and legends on Gorokhovaya Street, has a foundation. The fact is that the underground passage from the basement of the Rotunda really exists, only it leads to the neighboring courtyard-well. Why it was made is unclear. By the way,it is impossible to get into it - the entrance is filled with concrete (or crushed stone with cement).
But it is known for sure about another famous inhabitant of the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya, unlike Rasputin - it was a well-known criminal, thief and pimp Alexander Shtramm in St. Petersburg. The fact that a pimp often visited such an attractive place as a cafe is not surprising, but there is a legend that says that Alexander Shtram had a completely different interest in Rotunda. They say he was hiding in the famous basement of the Rotunda leading to another dimension from the police. And, they say, the police knew something, but they could not detain him there - the police entered this basement and did not see any Shtram. The Rotunda endured him for a long time but could not stand it - once he went through this door again, but after that he never left it …
Another legend is associated with the dome of the Rotunda - they say, if you climb onto the dome of the Rotunda, you will find yourself in another dimension or simply be damaged by your mind. Oddly enough, this legend has documentary confirmation - one of the party-goers tried to get in there and was electrocuted from a bare wire, after which he shook his head so badly that he was treated for a long time and wore a helmet for the rest of his life and was constantly smiling. They say that one unfortunate person hanged himself on the chandelier of the dome, and his spirit is now wandering around the Rotunda. If, standing below, you look at the chandelier, then you will immediately understand that only Batman, Superman or Spider-Man could hang there, and an ordinary person can get there using exclusively a rocket jump. But, in fact, the legend of the hanged man has good reason, since the chandelier right under the dome is an artifact of recent times,initially it descended from under the dome and hung exactly between the first and second floors, so it was very easy to roll on it.
The building of the Rotunda itself has special, inexplicable physical properties. It is believed that its structure is capable of transforming space and the Rotunda works as a portal to the fourth dimension. The case of a young man who became an old man in 15 minutes confirms this. In addition, there is a legend that if you go up the stairs of the rotunda with your eyes closed, you will never reach the end, and if you go up not along the right but along the left stairs, the one that leads to nowhere, then when you reach the dead end you can see the shadow from the seventh invisible column (remember that the seven in numerology is the most powerful number). By the way, among the people, this staircase (or rather the final platform on it) is called Bashlachevka because of the portrait of Alexander Bashlachev painted there, which never disappears, but the story with his portrait is a separate story - just below. According to the legend, the Bashlachyovka staircase was supposed to be completed, but when the construction was at the final stage, it turned out that it leads to the fifth dimension, the builders got scared and did not begin to finish it. But at certain moments, the end of this staircase arises by itself and takes people to unknown distances - it is somewhat reminiscent of the moving stairs in the Hogwarts school of wizardry from the Harry Potter movie. There is also a legend that there is a secret walled-up door to another world on Bashlachyovka - from time to time local party-goers try to dig a hole in the wall, and if they succeed, they see a toilet bowl in the apartment next door.the builders got scared and did not finish building it. But at certain moments, the end of this staircase arises by itself and takes people to unknown distances - it is somewhat reminiscent of the moving stairs in the Hogwarts school of wizardry from the Harry Potter movie. There is also a legend that there is a secret walled-up door to another world on Bashlachyovka - from time to time local party-goers try to dig a hole in the wall, and if they succeed, they see a toilet bowl in the apartment next door.the builders got scared and did not finish building it. But at certain moments, the end of this staircase arises by itself and takes people to unknown distances - it is somewhat reminiscent of the moving stairs in the Hogwarts school of wizardry from the Harry Potter movie. There is also a legend that there is a secret walled-up door to another world on Bashlachyovka - from time to time local party-goers try to dig a hole in the wall, and if they succeed, they see a toilet bowl in the apartment next door.that there is a secret walled-up door to another world on Bashlachevka - from time to time local party-goers try to dig a hole in the wall and if they succeed, they see a toilet bowl in the apartment next door.that there is a secret walled-up door to another world on Bashlachevka - from time to time local party-goers try to dig a hole in the wall and if they succeed, they see a toilet bowl in the apartment next door.
Another strange feature of this place is the acoustic effects. If you stand up in the Rotunda to say something in a whisper, then another person who is at any point in the Rotunda will hear everything so clearly and clearly, as if they whispered it right into his ear. It's true - proven. Such acoustics is characteristic of churches and is achieved with the help of special engineering and architectural methods, for example, in Orthodox churches, voices are used for this - special clay jugs embedded in the walls with their throats outward, but there are no acoustic devices here.
I have already told about one story of unhappy love, but, with unhappy love, one interesting omen is connected - if you are unhappy in love, then come to the Rotunda and leave any inscription on the wall and then, your personal life will definitely improve.
The energy of the Rotunda is amazing - amazing but unpredictable. Sometimes, coming to the Rotunda tired, after walking along it, I can easily work 5-6 days without a breath, devoting 1-3 hours a day to sleep. And once I went to the Rotunda for a shoot, and after visiting it, although before that I had had a good sleep and fresh, I came out like a squeezed lemon - I hardly got home and slept for 2.5 days without a break, - it is considered that for the normal operation of the portal It feeds on the energy of the people who visited the rotunda.
In the 70s at the beginning of the 80s of the 20th century, the Rotunda became the habitat of the Petersburg underground. The bulk of the people who gathered here were hippies, rockers and the St. Petersburg intelligentsia fascinated by the occult and esotericism, they say that from time to time members of the Church of Satan or simply Satanists gathered here - I don’t know, I didn’t have to meet, although I have been here often. The Rotunda on Gorokhovaya is gradually becoming a kind of club with free admission - they drank and smoked a lot here, played guitars and flutes - the rock group Picnic, led by Edmund Shklyarsky, rehearsed here in full force. Konstantin Kinchev and Viktor Tsoi were frequent guests here - they talked about political freedom and the meaning of life. From the legends of modern times I can tell you one more: they say that if you crawl through the holes of a straight staircase on the first floor,you will certainly go crazy. In fact, this is not a legend, I personally witnessed such an incident. Once, in his youth, having drunk a couple of bottles of some sort of viscous liqueur in the courtyard of the Rotunda with Andrei Panov (we did not dare to drink inside the Rotunda - the place is Holy), he crawled into the holes under the stairs for a bet - when he got out of there, he changed in face, grunted and turned into a Pig. From the everyday myths of modern times, it is worth noting that the ghost of Kurt Cobain, John Lennon, Jim Morrison and Yegor Letov sometimes appears in the Rotunda (underline the necessary). But these are stories and nothing more - the fact is that their fans often paint portraits of their idols on the walls of the Rotunda, and if you drink in the Rotunda a large amount of mind-altering liquids or smoke some kind of wrong tobacco,then an ordinary portrait in the clouded eyes of such a freak may well look like a ghost and nothing more. Actually, the use of large doses of alcohol gives rise to such myths. There is another beautiful story about how Yanka Diaghileva is depicted on the cover of her album “Home” in the Rotunda (here we are not talking about the well-known edition of this disc, about one of the limited edition re-editions released in Omsk). Such a disk does exist, but it is not the Rotunda that is depicted on it, but a gazebo in Omsk slightly similar to it. An incomprehensible story is also connected with the portrait of Bashlachev on Bashlachevka - they say that in fact this is his self-portrait, which SashBash painted 2 days before his death, but there is another version of the legend: once someone painted Viktor Tsoi. Then someone changed the portrait of Tsoi into Morrison,and the next author remade it into a portrait of Bashlachev, but in fact it is a portrait of someone's girl. By the way, the portrait of Tsoi constantly appears in different places of the Rotunda, but they say that next night it will be converted by itself into the image of St. Equal-to-the-Apostles Koska Kinchev - there are strong suspicions that there is no mysticism here, but all this is the tricks of hooligan sectarians from the ranks of the totalitarian church "Choi choked on matzo." In fact, there are no portraits of Bashlachev, Kinchev or, there, Tsoi in the Rotunda, and this forcibly replicated bike begins to bore. From time to time, one of the fans will draw, of course, a portrait of one or another rock idol, but this is an exception. On the next page you will see quite a lot of detailed photographs of the Rotunda's "murals", but I assure you that you will not even find the banal inscription "Choi - Forever". Completely different people come here. Well, the replication of such rumors does not turn out good. And the most interesting thing, I assure you, is written by people who not only have not been to the Rotunda, they have not even been to St. Petersburg. Simply, someone really wants them to be there, in general, a case similar to the "artist's wife", especially in our time, when "exciting news" is copied by oligophrenics on their shitblogs at a speed many times higher than the speed of transmission of gossip by grandmothers at the entrances. And also, they say that many have seen ghosts of hairy hippies in the Rotunda, who constantly hang out there and died from drug overdose, like they can be seen even during the day, and the number of such ghosts is directly proportional to the volume of alcohol drunk in the Rotunda (I do not recommend anyone to drink alcohol there - business may end badly). Worth mentioningthat of modern celebrities, theater and film actor Konstantin Khabensky, the star of "Night Watch" and "Destructive Force", often visited here.
But the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya Street has another secret mission - those who want to improve their financial situation and financial difficulties come here - there is a legend that the most famous Russian oligarch earned his first million just after a visit to the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya … But with financial requests (as well as with any others) you need to be very careful. The urban legend has preserved, for example, the following story (even indicating the real name): at the end of the 80s, a student of the Faculty of Economics of the Leningrad University Sushkov, despite the persuasions of his comrades who whiled away another evening in the Rotunda, stayed there until midnight, as he wanted to acquire dollar capital. No one saw him again. For some reason, the Rotunda did not like him very much …
The Rotunda House on Gorokhovaya Street was built by order of Savva Yakovlev, whose family owned it until 1863.
Mirror houses twins on the Fontanka, on the left is the Rotunda house on Gorokhovaya
Mirrored twin houses on Fontanka, on the left is the Rotunda house on Gorokhovaya (note, these are not twin houses, they are different, they are just similar, but the same number of storeys, similar decoration of porticos, the same color and well-thought-out compositional layout of the bridge square create a wonderful illusion of mirror reflection).
There is a small nuance here, sometimes it is erroneously indicated that this house was built by order of the merchant Ustinov. No, this is not so - the house of the merchant Ustinov is located opposite, on the other bank of the Fontanka, this is the same horseshoe-shaped building that forms the architectural ensemble of Semyonovskaya Square. Probably those who point to Ustinov as the owner of the Rotunda house are knocked down by the fact that there is also a rotunda in the courtyard of Ustinov's house, but not the Rotunda staircase, but a rotunda building. Rotundas on the Fontanka, as well as the green tenement houses of the architect E. I. Ferri de Pigny, and the later built apartment house Kukanova (L. M. Klado, Fontanka embankment, house # 79, architect A. I.
The last owner of the Rotunda house was the merchant A. F. Evmentiev (under his name, by the way, the house of the merchant Evmentiev, by the way, he was included in all official directories, including the "List of cultural heritage sites of KGIOP"), he and his descendants owned it until 1917. By order of the last owners, the house of the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya was supposed to be reconstructed and rebuilt, but the last figure in the date of ownership of the house did not allow this plan to be implemented (or perhaps this was prevented by the magic of the Rotunda).
Earlier, from 1735 to 1774, a glass processing plant of the English merchant Willim Elmsel was located on this site (the plant was transferred here from Yamburg). In 1774, the glass factory was transferred to the village of Nazya near Shlisselburg, and this area near the Fontanka River began to be built up with residential buildings. In general, it is worth noting that glass blowers, glass production and glass factories have always enjoyed among the people the fame associated with devilry and black magic, well, and the production of mirrors that can reflect human faces have always been directly associated with mysticism and ghosts. Remember the famous movie "The Alchemist"? - where did it take place? - right, in a glass factory. This was due to the completely unusual properties of glass - breaking into fragments, reflecting and creating reflections. By the way, the properties of glass have not yet been fully studied, layman,for example, he considers it a solid, although, from the point of view of science, glass is not a solid, it is an amorphous ultra-high viscosity liquid. But, be that as it may, the presence of a glass factory in this place to some extent predetermined the fate of Yakovlev's tenement house. In 1780, on the site of the plant, according to the project of the architect Yevgeny Ippolitovich Ferry de Pigny, a tenement house was built. The house was quite small, but thanks to the eight-column portico it had a monumental look. According to A. V. Kvasov, who designed the architectural ensemble of the bridge square back in 1976, this house and its mirrored twin (house number 79 on the Fontanka embankment) on the other side of Gorokhovaya Street were shifted from the red line, which made it possible to create a small open space,creating an illusion of a small noble estate from the panorama of houses and emphasizing the mirror principle of St. Petersburg.
Also A. V. Kvasov, who at that time was the chief architect of the "Commission on the stone building of St. Petersburg", developed a plan for Semyonovskaya square, which could be seen from the windows of the Rotunda house.
The facade of the Rotunda house, overlooking the Fontanka River, did not undergo changes until 1856, and in 1856, when A. F. Evmetyev (at that time it was called the Evmetyev House), the central part of the building with the Rotunda on Gorokhovaya was redesigned. In 1870, the dimensions of the first floor windows were changed. From the courtyard, the entrance from the side of Gorokhovaya street, a round spiral staircase has been preserved, which is of great artistic interest in terms of planning. It would be more correct to call the Rotunda not a staircase, but an independent room with a spiral metal staircase, decorated with six columns supporting the platform of the upper floor. Metal stairs, built in 1856, lead to the third floor (the second floor is absent), where the staircase goes around the entire rotunda in a circle. The walls of the third floor are decorated with pilasters,the Rotunda premise is completed with a dome.
In 1948, restoration repairs were carried out during which the house was returned to its original appearance, and the facade was painted.