Bandit Petersburg: The Series' St Petersburg

Sergei Chelishev's story starts in this Petrograd-side courtyard. On screen he grew up at Bolshaya Monetnaya 11, his parents were murdered here, and the gang ambush at the arch is one of the series' defining scenes. The flat interior was filmed somewhere else, and its address remains unknown to fans. Today the facade has been restored, and the courtyard is still recognisable.

Visitor guidance: The courtyard belongs to a residential building on the Petrograd side; visit quietly and keep to the yard.

This address was chosen to play the city's police. In the series it is the organised-crime unit where Kudasov, Stepan Markov and the other operatives work. Interrogations and briefings were filmed in the old rooms, and Chelishev meets Captain Subbotin on the steps outside to discuss his parents' murder. In real life the building still belongs to the police — the Petrograd district MVD headquarters and its economic-crime department — so the setting needed no dressing.

Visitor guidance: The building is an active police headquarters; view it from the street only.

The parapet by the Gorkovskaya metro entrance, opposite the Gorky monument, is where Chelishev repeatedly meets the operative Stepan Markov, passing information in the noise of the crowd. The station opened on 1 July 1963. The entrance seen in 2000 was the old pavilion; it was demolished and a new one was built in its place. The square and the park edge still make the same public meeting spot.

Visitor guidance: The entrance faces the Gorky monument on the Petrograd side, beside Alexander Park.

Dionis is the fictional restaurant where Viktor Pavlovich, the crime boss called Antibiotic, holds court. In the series it works as his informal headquarters: meetings, information, decisions about his people. The most memorable scene here is Chelishev's brawl with the thug Gus in front of the restaurant's respectable guests. The interiors were really filmed in the mansion at Fontanka 166, whose ceremonial columned entrance appears on screen. That entrance has since gone and the facade has been rebuilt.

Location precision: OpenStreetMap has no house No. 166; the pin is on its neighbour, No. 164, a few metres along the embankment.

Visitor guidance: The former restaurant entrance is gone; view the building from the Fontanka embankment.

Zvantsev's luxurious flat is in the Benois House, the huge neoclassical block on Kamennoostrovsky Prospect. Chelishev is brought here by Zvantsev's men, and here he learns that Katya has married Oleg — the emotional hinge of the second film. The real building had 250 flats, 25 numbered entrances and 12 courtyards, and it now holds the Kirov memorial flat museum, open since 1956.

Visitor guidance: The Kirov memorial flat museum is inside the Benois House; the facade and courtyards are seen from Kamennoostrovsky Prospect.

Kresty is the series' image of punishment. Zvantsev, the White Lawyer, is held here, and his gang waits at the gates when he is released; later Chelishev collects Katya, Zvantsev's widow, at the same brick walls. The real prison opened in 1893 as two cross-shaped blocks and closed in 2017 after 125 years. It is now being turned into a cultural complex. The red-brick towers above the Neva are still the landmark the series made them.

Visitor guidance: The former prison stands on the Arsenalnaya embankment and is being redeveloped; view it from the embankment.

The second film ends in the Angleterre's restaurant. Zvantsev's release from Kresty is celebrated here, and the party is broken up when the special forces arrest the guests at their tables; Chelishev finds himself face to face with former colleagues who make clear he has crossed the line. The hotel is described as the city's oldest, with windows onto St Isaac's Square, and the poet Sergei Yesenin died here in 1925. It still operates as a four-star hotel, and the restaurant is open to the public.

Visitor guidance: The Angleterre is a working hotel at Malaya Morskaya 24; its restaurant is open to non-guests.