The Top Travel Destinations with Kevin Flanagan
Aug 6, 2026 · 12 min · 9 segments
Beneath one of St Petersburg's most gilded palaces lies a cold, vaulted cellar where, one December night in 1916, aristocrats poisoned, shot and finally drowned Grigori Rasputin — the monk who would…
It's narrow and it's cold and it leads beneath one of the most beautiful houses in Europe.
At the bottom, there's a low vaulted room with a table laid out for a midnight feast.
There's little cakes, glasses of Madeira, and sitting at that table, lit like a stage set, are wags.
One of them, these figures in wax, has long black hair, a beard and eyes that definitely seem to follow you.
And standing in that cellar one fine morning in St. Petersburg, Russia, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
Because in this very room, on a December night at the end of 1916, a group of aristocrats murdered Grigori Rasputin.
And though I didn't know it yet, Something followed me up those stairs and never left.
It's narrow and it's cold and it leads beneath one of the most beautiful houses in Europe.
At the bottom, there's a low vaulted room with a table laid out for a midnight feast.
There's little cakes, glasses of Madeira, and sitting at that table, lit like a stage set, are wags.
One of them, these figures in wax, has long black hair, a beard and eyes that definitely seem to follow you.
And standing in that cellar one fine morning in St. Petersburg, Russia, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
Because in this very room, on a December night at the end of 1916, a group of aristocrats murdered Grigori Rasputin.
And though I didn't know it yet, Something followed me up those stairs and never left.
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