[1] Before the October Revolution of 1917, the British embassy in Russia was seated in Saint Petersburg, in a palace overlooking the Troitsky Bridge.

The architects for the new embassy were Ahrends, Burton and Koralek (ABK) of London and Dublin, and the new complex was officially opened by Anne, Princess Royal on 17 May 2000.

[6][7] In 2007, a sculpture by Andrey Orlov of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, as portrayed by Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin, was erected on the embankment alongside the embassy.

[9] The Moscow authorities stated that this was in retaliation for a one-block section of Wisconsin Avenue in front of the Embassy of Russia, Washington, D.C., being renamed in honor of Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian First Deputy Prime Minister shot dead by assassins in 2015.

A British Consulate-General in Saint Petersburg was established in 1992, but it was closed in 2018 because of a diplomatic fallout following the poisoning of a former Russian intelligence officer in the United Kingdom.