Evocative use of the original cells for displays about the former political prisoners of Trubetskoy Bastion – who included the likes of Maxim Gorky, Leon Trotsky, Mikhail Bakunin and Fyodor Dostoevsky – make this one of the best of the museums and exhibition spaces at Peter & Paul Fortress. Short biographies of the various inmates are posted on the doors.
Peter the Great supervised the torture to death of his son here and, after the 1917 revolution, the communists continued to use the prison for former aristocrats and counter-revolutionaries until 1924, when it was turned into a museum.