The Bad Apartment · Apartment No. 50

Apartment No. 50 in a Moscow block was where the writer Bulgakov lived while he wrote The Master and Margarita; in the novel the devil and his retinue take up residence in this “bad apartment” and turn the whole building upside down.

Episodes from the novel are often told as if they were true: doors opening by themselves, banknotes appearing on the wall, neighbours vanishing into thin air. The writer himself burned the first draft in this room.

It is a museum now, and the sign on the door reads “The Bad Apartment, No. 50”. The caretaker says people knock every evening to ask: can we have a look inside.

Urban Legends / Moscow · Russia / 1920s