Hauswald Dacha – St. Petersburg's most cinematic mansion (PHOTOS)
The locals call this luxurious mansion ‘Irene Adler's house’, because this was the house of Irene Adler, a heroine of the Soviet iconic ‘The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson’ TV series (episode ‘The Treasure of Agra’, 1983).
The house and its original porch have also featured in other Soviet cinema. For example, the TV adaptation of the operetta ‘Die Fledermaus’ (1979) was filmed there.
Soviet viewers also saw the mansion in the movie ‘Don César de Bazan’ (1989) and many others.
The cottage was built in 1898 for Eugenia Hauswald, by order of her bakery entrepreneur husband (whose identity has since been lost). But, soon, the house was bought by a rich businessman named Anatoly Demidov and the exterior of the building was slightly changed.
The architecture of the building is a typical example of the Art Nouveau style fashionable at the turn of the 20th century. It's marked by a semicircular porch and window arches, towers and asymmetrical forms.
In Soviet times, the house was used as a children's penal colony and then as a sanatorium. Because of its “European” appearance, the St. Petersburg mansion became a favorite place for filming for ‘Lenfilm’ studio productions. It was the setting for scenes that that were set in Spain, England, Austria and other countries.