The Tolstoy House is a well-known apartment building in St. Petersburg, located at 15-17 Rubinstein Street and 54 Fontanka Embankment.

Her estate included four houses, sheds and barns, ice storage room, stables, orchards and vegetable garden.

In 1860 the estate was bought out by Mariya Fyodorovna Ruadze; she ordered the house to be rebuilt in stone and connected to the outhouse wing.

In 1889 countess Ekaterina Ignatyeva purchased the land and finally in the early XX century it was sold to Major-General Count Mikhail Pavlovich Tolstoy [ru].

Tolstoy commissioned Fyodor Lidval to build a profitable house, the project was approved by the client in March 1910.

[8] Prominent Russian art historian Boris Kirikov [ru] finds the Renaissance arches the most decorative part of the design.

Because of the irregular shape of the land, the inner street is angular and the yards open one after another, creating an unusual perspective effect.

According to his idea, the inner yards were to create the spirit of good-neighbourliness with a semi-private zone where the dwellers and the passers-by wouldn't be isolated from each other.

[6] The building was provided with the most modern amenities, it had air conditioning, ventilation and extraction systems, plumbing, electricity, telephone line, garbage disposal, and 19 elevators.

[17] The Russian Civil War forced many inhabitants of the Tolstoy house to leave their homes, many of them left abroad.

[23] After the war, the inner street was significantly altered: driveways were made, the lawns were planted with poplars, and a statue was installed in the fountain.

[24] Other films using the Tolstoy House include A Doctor Called?, Could One Imagine?, Born of the Revolution [ru], and Gangster Petersburg.

In 1988 it became a part of UNESCO World Heritage Site number 540, Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.