Exhibition “The Prison Keeper's Apartment in the Trubetskoy Bastion Prison”

About exhibition

The exhibition tells about the life and official duties of the prison keeper, as well as the investigative and judicial proceedings that took place within the walls of the “apartment of special purpose”. In the Trubetskoy Bastion Prison, alongside 71 solitary cells (from 1878 their number became 69), punishment cells (karcer), and rooms for admitting detainees, provision was made on the second floor for an apartment for the prison keeper and members of his family. The exhibition features a model of the Trubetskoy Bastion Prison that gives an idea of the building's internal layout. You can see a partially reconstructed interior of the keeper's apartment. Furniture and household items from the late 19th–early 20th centuries are presented, similar to those that once stood here: a writing desk covered with green baize, a stationery cabinet and a bookcase, armchairs, a mirror, a wall clock, a desk kerosene lamp, and writing implements. The keeper's apartment was not used for museum display for a long time. Today the exhibition there, for the first time, tells in detail about the history and everyday life of these rooms in the late 19th–20th centuries, covering a wide range of topics: from the private life and official duties of the prison keeper to the historical events associated with the February and October Revolutions of 1917.