The famous hotel was built in 1901 by the architects L.N. Kekushev, W.F. Walcot and others. Mikhail and Elena Bulgakovy came to the Metropol on many occasions to banquets and receptions. Here they lunched and dined with the families of Petr Williams, Sergey Ermolinsky, Boris Erdman and others.

The hotel is also mentioned in the novel The Master and Margarita: ‘”I’m very pleased”, muttered Berlioz, “but the truth is, you won’t be comfortable at my place… but the Metropol has wonderful rooms, it’s a first-class hotel”’. One of Bulgakov’s visits to the Metropol turned out to be forced by necessity. In January 1934, a fire broke out in the Bulgakov’s house (on Bolshoy Pirogovskaya Street). By a twist of fate, at that moment, the writer was dictating the scene of the fire in Berlioz’s flat to his wife. Elena Sergeevna wrote in her diary, ‘The dictation finished at one o’clock at night. I went into the kitchen for dinner, Masha was cleaning. She was angry, and knocked over a kerosene lamp, which flew from the table into the corner, where a can, one quarter full of kerosene stood unclosed. A fire burst out. I screamed, “Misha!!” He rushed in as he was, in a shirt and barefoot, and found the kitchen already in flames… M.A., standing up to his ankles in water with burnt arms and hair, threw everything he could onto the flames: blankets, pillows and all the washed clothes. Eventually he stopped the fire…. We went to sleep at seven o’clock in the morning and at ten, we had to get up so M.A. could go to the theatre. We went to have breakfast at the Metropol.’