Why was an octagonal house built in St. Petersburg, or What secrets are kept by the "well" on the Petrograd side

2023 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 13:10

There is one amazing pre-revolutionary house in the city on the Neva. When viewed from a bird's eye view, it looks like an octagon. And, of course, it was built according to the "proprietary" St. Petersburg principle of houses-wells. This beautiful and mysterious building is located on Maly Avenue of the Petrogradskaya Side. Why did the architects design the house in this particular shape? There are two versions: mystical and real.

This house, located near the Sportivnaya metro station, is causing all sorts of rumors. Some say that its eight faces symbolize the Star of Malta and believe that the house is associated with the Order of Malta, of which Paul I was Grand Master. By the way, the inner house of the famous Mikhailovsky (Engineering) castle also has an octagonal shape. Other lovers of mystical stories believe that in the courtyard of an octagon house one can make cherished wishes - and they, they say, will come true. Especially popular is the belief that you need to make a wish by touching a branch of a metal tree that is installed in the courtyard of the house (it appeared here after the construction of the building).

In fact, there is no mysticism here, and this unusual house possesses "magical properties" in exactly the same degree as other ancient buildings of St. Petersburg.

The Octagon was built between 2012 and 2016 as an apartment building. The customer was Nikolai Zanin, an artist and builder, an honorary citizen and a member of the Society for Mutual Credit of Timber Industrialists (the building was called “Zanin’s tenement house”). The authors of the unusual project are architects Nikolai Rezvy and Lev Yarugsky.

Well, they decided to make it octagonal, because by the beginning of the 20th century, the entire Petrograd side in St. Petersburg was already built up so densely that when building new houses it was necessary to save space as much as possible. So architects contrived, coming up with more and more new solutions.

The building was designed in the neoclassical style. Massive balusters on balconies, pilasters, projections are interesting. Inside the octagonal courtyard, according to some sources, before the revolution there was a laundry and a janitorial.

The octagon house has another interesting detail: inside, in the front hall, you can see a triangular flight of stairs. It looks especially impressive in photographs.

It is interesting that about six years ago, a panel was solemnly opened on a blank wall of a house on Maly Avenue of the Petrogradskaya Side - a painting dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory was painted on the surface of the wall. The author for the wall painting was determined by a competition organized by the municipal entity Okrug Petrovsky.

Very interesting photos are obtained in the courtyard of the house. Sometimes you can even catch the moment when one or more birds fly over the "well".

Legendary St. Petersburg courtyards-wellsthat give the city a special charm can be photographed in different ways. In the picture, such a courtyard can turn out to be charming, and mysterious, and romantic, and even gloomy and depressing. It all depends on how the photographer sees him.