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# The Fire at the Miller Mansion in Saint Petersburg, and Building Bans After Fires in the Laws of Different Countries
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/vecherom-1-oktiabria-v-peterburge-sgorel-osobniak-millera-na-isaakievskoi-ploshchadi-3/
- Published: 2026-10-03T13:35:25.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-04T13:10:11.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Architecture, Heritage, Society, Saint Petersburg

On the evening of 1 October the Miller mansion at 3 Isaakievskaya Square in Saint Petersburg burned down. The house dates from the second half of the 18th century; in 1879-1880 it was rebuilt in eclectic forms by the architect Ferdinand Miller, and in 2021 it received the status of a regional cultural heritage site. The fire covered an area of about 2,000 square metres and spread to the neighbouring building. The mansion was undergoing reconstruction into luxury housing, financed by a preferential loan of 768 million roubles.

The Investigative Committee has opened a case for breaches of safety rules during construction work and is looking into a version involving welding. The official version speaks of negligence.

Such fires, of course, recall a practice known in many countries: a forest on an expensive plot, or a monument that stands in the developer's way, burns down, and on the cleared land there appears what it had previously been forbidden to build. Since deliberate arson is hard to prove, several states have taken a different path, removing the motive.

In Italy, Article 10 of the 2000 law on forest fires forbids any construction on land after a fire for 10 years and forbids changing its designated use for 15 years. Municipalities are, moreover, obliged to keep a register of burned plots. In 2018 the Court of Cassation clarified that building is permitted only if the urban development plan provided for it before the fire. True, in this case we are speaking not of burned historic property but of forest-fund land.

In Spain, the 2003 forest law forbids changing the designated use of burned forest land for thirty years. Exceptions are possible for projects approved before the fire, or by a special regional law with obligatory compensation for the lost forest.

Greece and Turkey have enshrined this norm in their constitutions. Article 117 of the Greek constitution obliges the authorities to declare a burned forest an area of reforestation. Article 169 of the Turkish constitution requires a new forest to be grown on the site of a burned one and forbids giving that land over to ploughing and grazing.

In Portugal, a decree of 1990 forbade changing land use for ten years after a forest fire, but in 2021 the new fire management system abolished it. The country is now discussing a petition to ban the sale and development of burned plots for at least twenty years.

In Russia, a similar norm, though for monuments, was proposed as long ago as 2017\. The Voronezh Regional Duma submitted to the State Duma a bill that would have forbidden capital construction on the site of lost cultural heritage objects and permitted only their reconstruction. Alas, a prohibition of this kind has never appeared in our legislation on cultural heritage objects.

If one thinks about it, the Italian approach is equally effective for protecting a forest in Sardinia and a mansion in the centre of Saint Petersburg. If on the site of a burned building, as in the examples with forests, one may only restore what stood there before, and building something new and more profitable is forbidden, arson loses its commercial sense.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/10/file_176.jpg)