One of Mayakovsky's first residential addresses in Petersburg was the furnished room house "Palais-Royal." In 1913, when the poet had just turned 20, he moved into room 126 of the hotel. This sounds better than it actually was—in memories of the house on Pushkinskaya, bedbugs were most often mentioned, and the "palace" rooms were single-room and identical. From here, the poet often wrote letters to his mother asking her to send him money. And it was here that the nineteen-year-old Besstuzhevka Sofya Shamardina came to Mayakovsky, in whom Korney Chukovsky and Igor Severyanin were in love. "A small room with ordinary hotel furnishings," she recalled. "A table, a bed, a sofa, a large oval mirror on the wall. I remember the mirror because I see Mayakovsky and myself in it. He led me to him, hugged me by the shoulders. We stand and look at ourselves for a long time. 'Beautiful,' he says. 'We don’t look like others'..." However, the Soviet authorities generally tried not to speak to ordinary Soviet citizens, fans of Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky's talent, about this "threefold love," or about the poet's personal life of the revolution. Later, Lilya Brik also came here.
Here in December, the poet finished the tragedy "Vladimir Mayakovsky," simultaneously rehearsing it in the theater.
Many people "dropped their anchors" in this furnished mansion-hotel. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the house became one of the important cultural points in the city. Zinaida Gippius wrote that the "Palais-Royal" was "for some reason loved by writers and they lived there, especially the unmarried, for months or even years." Among them were Pyotr Pertsev and Akim Volynsky, Ivan Bunin. Other room renters included artists Grigory Myasoyedov and Isaac Levitan, actor Mamont Dalsky (Neelov), and opera singer Fyodor Chaliapin. Gleb Uspensky often stayed at the "Palais-Royal," and from his memoirs, it became known that Nikolai Shelgunov and Nikolai Mikhaylovsky also rented rooms there. Each of Uspensky's visits was accompanied by a "prolonged spree" with numerous admirers. Evenings with many guests were often hosted by Alexander Kuprin. Dalsky described the house as a "refuge for the artistic bohemia," while the young Chaliapin recalled that "this refuge was very dirty, with lots of dust, fleas, flies, and other insects languishing there. In the dark corridors, you could always meet drunken people of both sexes." From 1906 to 1908, the retired Minister of Railways Mikhail Khilkov lived in the "Palais-Royal."
After the revolution, the house was converted into communal housing. In the mid-20th century, the building housed a dormitory for railway workers. Today, it remains a residential building with communal apartments. Notably, some of the former "Palais-Royal" decor has been preserved in the building—the stucco on the walls near the entrance, as well as the spacious main entrance hall and the gentle staircase. This is exactly how the aforementioned Russian singer Fyodor Ivanovich, soloist of the Bolshoi and Mariinsky Theaters and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theater from 1918 to 1921, described the latter.
Today, the "Palais-Royal" is a residential building with privatized and communal apartments. According to residents' testimonies, bedbugs are still there.
Sources:
https://peterburg.center/ln/marshrut-po-sledam-mayakovskogo-v-peterburge.html
https://www.sobaka.ru/city/city/112373
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Большой_меблированный_дом_«Пале-Рояль»
