Vladimir Nabokov House Museum

To fans of the renowned Russo-American author of Lolita, one of the greatest prose stylists of the 20^th century, the building that houses the St. Petersburg Vladimir Nabokov Museum will already be familiar through the wealth of information about it that can be found in many of his greatest works.

Nabokov was born here in 1899 to a family of wealthy and intellectual aristocrats. His father, Vladimir Dmitrievich, was a lawyer and leading figure in the Cadets - the Constitutional-Democratic Party - who helped to draught the constitution of the Provisional Government after the February Revolution of 1917. Forced to flee the country for good in 1919, the younger Nabokov retained achingly sharp memories of his beloved family home, particularly well documented in his autobiography Speak Memory.

Although little remains of the house as Nabokov knew it - the second floor of the building is now occupied by the editorial offices of daily newspaper Nevskoe Vremya - the museum, which was founded in 1997, has done its best to recreate the dining room and library as they were in Nabokov's childhood, and has collected a wealth of memorabilia from all over the world, including part of the author's famous butterfly collection, personal effects including his pince-nez and travel Scrabble set, and several historic manuscripts and editions of his work, including unofficially published samizdat copies from the Soviet Union.

The museum is also extremely active in organizing seminars, conferences and temporary exhibitions connected with Nabokov and the authors he admired most, including Anton Chekhov and James Joyce.