Yusupov Palace, St Petersburg

Yusupov Palace tickets and prices

For most foreign visitors the right ticket is the self-guided State Rooms and Prince’s Living Quarters, 950 ₽, about 70–75 minutes, with an audio guide in English and eight other languages. It takes in the state drawing rooms, the private theatre, the Moorish Room and the prince’s study — but not the Rasputin rooms.

The Rasputin exhibition comes with the combined ticket (1,300 ₽, about 1 hour 50 minutes), but its audio guide is in Russian only — fine if the pictures are enough, frustrating if you want the story. The guided routes 2, 4 and 6 (1,200–1,900 ₽) also include it, but the palace doesn’t say which languages its group tours use — expect Russian. For an English-speaking guide, book a private tour.

Buy on the palace’s official website under “Buy ticket”: the palace doesn’t vouch for tickets sold by third parties, and e-tickets work at the door without exchange. Foreign-issued Visa and Mastercard cards don’t work in Russia since March 2022, so the online shop won’t take them: use a Russian card, bring roubles, or book a tour that includes the ticket. Concession prices are for Russian citizens only.

Opening hours

The palace is open every day, 10:00–19:30, with no weekly closing day on the official site. Visits run in timed sessions; the last one starts at 18:00. The ticket office and entrance open 9:30–18:00, and sales for each session stop 10 minutes before it begins.

You can go in no earlier than 30 minutes before your slot, and if a session is sold out online, the desk won’t have tickets either. The garden is free and open 9:00–20:30, with a café — handy for killing time before your session. Toilets are inside the palace, ticket holders only.

Is the Yusupov Palace worth visiting?

Yes — if you have already done the Hermitage and want to see how Russia’s richest aristocrats, rather than its emperors, actually lived. It is compact, rarely crowded, and in 90 minutes you see gilded ballrooms, a family theatre and lived-in private rooms that most Petersburg mansions lost after 1917.

The Rasputin rooms are the hook, not the substance: a few basement rooms with wax figures and documents. Don’t come for Rasputin alone. Come for the theatre and the interiors, and add the Rasputin rooms if the story grips you. With one day in the city, skip it; with two or three, it is one of the best-value palaces in St Petersburg.

What to see inside

• The private theatre — a tiny gilded auditorium with boxes, often called a miniature Mariinsky. Every route includes it.
• The Front Staircase and the run of state drawing rooms — Tapestry, Blue, Red and Green.
• The White-Column Hall and the Ballroom, built for parties of hundreds.
• The picture gallery halls, added in the 1830s for the collection brought from the family estate at Arkhangelskoye near Moscow.
• The Moorish Room and the Turkish Study in the prince’s quarters — 19th-century fantasies of the East.
• The Oak Dining Room and the neo-Gothic Henry II Drawing Room.
• Felix and Irina’s apartments — the Silver Boudoir, the jewel vault nicknamed “Aladdin’s Cave” and a study with a swimming pool (routes 5 and 6).
• The “Murder of Grigory Rasputin” exhibition — Felix’s study and the basement dining room, with wax figures, photos and investigation papers.

The Rasputin murder: what happened here

On the night of 17 December 1916 (30 December in the modern calendar), Prince Felix Yusupov and fellow conspirators killed Grigory Rasputin, the Siberian peasant who had become a confidant of Nicholas II’s family. By Yusupov’s own account, Rasputin was lured to the palace, offered poisoned cakes and wine in the basement dining room, then shot; his body was found in the Malaya Nevka river.

The museum has staged those rooms as a documentary exhibition with wax figures of the plotters. It is only on routes 2, 4 and 6 and the combined ticket — the 950 ₽ ticket doesn’t include it. It is rated 16+, but the palace says the age rating is a recommendation.

A short history

Jean-Baptiste Vallin de la Mothe built the first house here in the 1770s for Count Andrei Shuvalov. Catherine the Great later bought it for her lady-in-waiting Alexandra Branicka, who sold it, contents and all, to Prince Boris Yusupov in 1830 for 250,000 roubles.

Architect Andrei Mikhailov rebuilt it in the 1830s, adding gallery halls and the theatre, where in 1836 Glinka rehearsed the first act of his opera “A Life for the Tsar”, according to the museum. Five generations of Yusupovs lived here until the revolution. The palace was nationalised in 1918, given to the city’s teachers in 1925, used as a hospital in the Siege and hit by bombs in 1941; restoration began during the war and still goes on.

Yusupov Palace vs the Hermitage vs the Fabergé Museum

Do the Hermitage first. Pick the Yusupov Palace when you want an intimate, uncrowded palace you can see in full in an afternoon; pick the Fabergé Museum if jewels and decorative art are your thing.

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How to do it right

• Short on time: guided route 1 (state rooms and theatre) takes 70 minutes.
• Best all-rounder for English speakers: the 950 ₽ self-guided ticket with the English audio guide — download the app before you go, signal inside is patchy.
• Want the Rasputin rooms in English? Book a private English-speaking tour; the palace’s own combined audio guide is Russian-only.
• No food or drink inside — eat first, especially before the 2.5-hour route 6.
• Afterwards, New Holland is a 7-minute walk and the Mariinsky Theatre 5 minutes.
• The palace garden is free to enter, with a café — a good place to wait for your slot.

Questions