Old Vienna Café

"Old Vienna" is a memorable address in the literary life of St Petersburg at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries: under this name, a guesthouse operates today at the corner of Gorokhovaya and Malaya Morskaya streets, named in honour of the famous "Vienna" restaurant, which for several decades brought together writers, poets and performers of the imperial capital under its roof. The establishment itself disappeared long ago, but its memory lives on in the décor and programme of the present-day guesthouse.

The building on the corner of the two streets is a former apartment house, built in 1834 to a design by the architect Harald Bosse and rebuilt in an eclectic style in 1875–1877 by the architect Ivan Maas. The house belonged to the merchant Fyodor Rotin, and it was he who opened a restaurant here in the 1870s under the name "Vienna" (other signs were also used, including "Vienna Tavern" and "International Restaurant"). In 1903 the establishment passed to a new owner, Ivan Sokolov, who reopened it on 31 May that year: he wanted writers to have a place not merely to dine, but to sit at ease and talk with one another away from editorial offices and private apartments.

The restaurant originally occupied the mezzanine floor, with windows facing Gorokhovaya Street; later, nineteen private rooms were fitted out here. The owner introduced a special custom: guests were offered sheets of white paper on which they could leave a drawing, a joke, or an autograph; these sheets were then hung on the walls of the buffet and dining rooms, and over time this collection of autographs became one of the establishment's main attractions.

The restaurant quickly became a meeting place for the creative intelligentsia. Its regulars included the writers Alexander Kuprin, Alexei Tolstoy, Mikhail Artsybashev and Alexander Amfiteatrov, the poet Sergei Gorodetsky, and the humorist Arkady Averchenko; it was also visited by Maxim Gorky and Alexander Blok, the painters Isaak Brodsky and Yuly Klever, and actors from St Petersburg theatres. Back under Rotin, in 1884, a chess club had opened at the restaurant. In 1911, within the walls of "Vienna," a group of young poets led by Igor Severyanin proclaimed the founding of their own literary movement — Ego-Futurism — naming it the Academy of Ego-Poetry.

After the revolution the restaurant closed, and the building lost its former function for a long time. An establishment under the old name was revived on this site only in 1993, and since 2019 the "Old Vienna" guesthouse has operated here: its rooms are decorated in honour of the poets and writers of the Silver Age, literary and poetry evenings are held regularly, and the house is included in city excursion routes through the historic centre.

Today "Old Vienna" is not a working restaurant but a modest memorial to an entire era of St Petersburg cultural life, when the fates of literary movements were decided and new names were born at tables on the corner of Gorokhovaya and Malaya Morskaya streets. The building itself remains a living witness to this history and continues to attract those interested in the culture of the Silver Age.