Today, this luxurious mansion houses the Museum of Political History of Russia, and in the last century the famous Russian prima ballerina of the Mariinsky Theatre lived here, a favorite of the august people of the empire Matilda Kshesinskaya.

The house was built in 1906 by architect A. I. von Gauguin, who developed the project of the A. I. Suvorova, and architect A. I. Dmitriev was engaged in interior design. The mansion is designed in the style of Northern Art Nouveau — at that time it was a trend characteristic exclusively for the city on the Neva. The inspiration for this style was the national romanticism of Swedish and Finnish architecture. The volumetric space is made by a compositionally-different solution of planes: spacious rooms are echoed by the free layout of windows - different in size and shape. Design solutions are based on the use of contrasting combinations. During the construction, the most fashionable finishes were chosen — marble of various colors, majolica tiles and bricks for facing, forged metal. The building has a winter garden. The space inside the mansion is organized by a series of successively articulated rooms placed on the same axis, which create an end-to-end perspective.

Kshesinskaya Mansion has a very interesting location. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Petrograd side was considered one of the most fashionable districts of the city. The house was built almost on the banks of the Neva River, from where you can see a picturesque perspective: the Senate, the Winter Palace, the Academy of Sciences. Only a very important person could afford such splendor.

In 1917, the ballerina left her fabulous mansion, after receiving several ill-intentioned letters. In a matter of days, her house was occupied by representatives of the RSDLP (b) and turned it into something like an oratorical tribune, where Vladimir Ilyich Lenin arrived on April 3. Kshesinskaya appealed to the court with demands to release her house from the domination of revolutionaries and to compensate for property losses. As a result, an appropriate document was sent to the mansion, and Lenin even had to give an order to return the ballerina's personal belongings. But the Bolsheviks refused to fulfill the order of the court. After the mansion was seized by the troops of the Provisional Government, the house was completely looted. Kshesinskaya left St. Petersburg, continuing to defend her home through a lawyer. But she was never destined to return to Russia — she married and died in Paris, one year before her 100th birthday.

The mansion was a platform for many public institutions, and since 1991 it has been called the Museum of Political History of Russia. Everyone knows that there is a museum on Gorkovskaya Street, but few people remember that such a lively and real history is associated with this beautiful house. The story of one of the most beautiful women during the fall of the Russian Empire.