The Zoological Musuem (The Fatal Eggs)

6 Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street
Subway station «Okhotniy ryad»
Bulgakov came to this house on numerous occasions to visit Professor A. Severtsov. Bulgakov’s friend, the art critic A. Gabrichevsky, was married to the Professor’s daughter. The writer celebrated new year’s eve with them for the year 1925. This house is depicted in The Fatal Eggs (1924) and Professor Persikov was clearly modelled on Severtsov himself.
The Gabrichevskys lived in the Servertsovs’ flat at the Zoological Museum, which Bulgakov visited on a number of occasions. In all likelihood, he even saw the academic’s office on the second floor. Bulgakov’s impressions were obviously reflected in other characters from The Fateful Eggs – Persikov’s assistant Petr Stepanovich Ivanov is reminiscent of Severtsov’s student Boris Matveev and the guard Pankrat is very similar to the senior museum warden Felix, according to the way Severtsov’s daughter described him in her memoirs.