Avito continues to delight with unique lots

Avito continues to delight with unique lots. This time, for a modest 89 million roubles (almost 40 million more than last year's price), this flea market of the whole universe has put up for sale a 240-square-metre, six-room flat with a terrace in the centre of Saint Petersburg, in the "House of the Three Benois", where from 1939 Dmitry Shostakovich lived with his family and where he wrote his Seventh, the "Leningrad", Symphony. The address: 29/37 Kronverkskaya Street. I fear that since Shostakovich's day the flat has retained its walls, its stuccoed ceilings and its bath, while the decidedly odd and tasteless furnishings in shades of sand (not included in the sale) are the legacy of the subsequent owners, who bought the flat from the composer's sister in 1974. Credit is due, however, to the present owners, who have restored the flat to its pre-revolutionary layout; the Shostakovichs, for their part, occupied only 4 rooms of this space, with windows onto Pushkarskaya Street. At such moments I somehow grow sad that some rogue or corrupt official may buy up something of the kind and attach his ill-gotten millions to another's history 😔