The Master and Margarita: Bulgakov's Moscow

The Moscow story opens on a May day at the ponds, where Berlioz, chairman of the writers' association MASSOLIT, and the poet Ivan Bezdomny meet a stranger who looks foreign. He predicts that a Russian woman, a Komsomol member, will cut off Berlioz's head, and Berlioz is soon run over by a tram. Oddly, no regular tram line ever ran here, only a temporary night-storage track in the 1930s. In the epilogue Ivan, now a professor, returns every spring full moon to the very same bench.

Visitor guidance: A public park and pond; the nearest metro stations are Mayakovskaya (east exit) and Pushkinskaya. A sign warns against talking to strangers.

MASSOLIT lives in Griboedov House on the Boulevard Ring, in a shabby garden behind a cast-iron railing. Its restaurant serves sturgeon layered with crayfish tails and fresh caviar, and on the night Berlioz dies the members dance the foxtrot Alleluia. Koroviev and Behemoth have no luck dining without writers' cards, until Koroviev gets in as the writer Panaev and the cat as the critic Skabichevsky. Then Woland's men start a fire that destroys the restaurant and the whole system of MASSOLIT privileges.

Location precision: Griboedov House is invented; the pin marks Herzen House on Tverskoy Boulevard, which Bulgakov scholars take as its model, today the Gorky Literature Institute.

Flat 50, fifth floor, Bolshaya Sadovaya 302-bis, has a bad name: two years before the story five tenants and a polite, white-gloved policeman vanished from it within a week. Then the theatre director Likhodeev and Berlioz moved in with their wives. After Berlioz dies, Woland's retinue takes the flat over, and in chapter 27 Behemoth sets it alight so that the whole house burns down. The address is invented, but the model is the apartment house at Bolshaya Sadovaya 10, where Bulgakov lived from 1921 to 1924.

Location precision: The novel's address, Bolshaya Sadovaya 302-bis, is invented; the pin marks Bolshaya Sadovaya 10, the real building it is based on.

Visitor guidance: Two Bulgakov museums share the building; the state museum occupies flat 50 on the fourth floor.

Woland and his retinue secure a slot at the Variety Theatre, billing themselves as practitioners of black magic; its director, Likhodeev, has already been sent off to Yalta. The audience is amazed as conjured money and luxury fashion items are handed out, and then the money and clothes vanish, leaving chaos and embarrassment. Bulgakov's Variety is invented, but the Music Hall of 1926–1936 appears to be its model, in the former Nikitin circus: the novel's trapezes under the dome and white globes lighting up "like the sun" fit it. Only the dome of the old circus can still be seen, and the building now belongs to the Moscow Satire Theatre.

Location precision: The Variety is invented; the pin marks the Satire Theatre on Triumfalnaya Square, the rebuilt Nikitin circus that housed the Music Hall, which the Variety apparently imitates.

Given Azazello's cream, Margarita turns into a witch and flies over Moscow, past Sivtsev Vrazhek, the Arbat and the Vakhtangov Theatre. A building with a plate reading "Dramlit House" catches her eye. In the flat of the critic Latunsky she takes revenge for the Master's dishonour: naked and invisible, she smashes the piano, a mirrored wardrobe and the windows and opens the taps. She stops only on the third floor, at the sight of a frightened four-year-old boy sitting on a bed.

Location precision: The novel does not say where Dramlit House stands; its black marble, wide doors and influential tenants resemble the writers' house at Lavrushinsky Lane 17, which the pin marks.

Margarita agrees to be hostess at Satan's great ball and welcomes dark historical figures arriving from Hell. It is held in an ordinary flat, reached by an invisible, endless staircase. In return Satan offers her a wish, and she asks for the Master. The real echo: on 24 April 1935 Bulgakov attended the Spring Festival at Spaso House, the US ambassador's residence, with birch trees, a table covered in Finnish tulips and a bear drunk on champagne. His widow said it inspired a new version of the ball chapter; scholars disagree.

Location precision: In the novel the ball takes place in the Bad Apartment; the pin marks Spaso House, whose 1935 festival is widely thought, though not proven, to have inspired it.

At sunset, on the stone terrace of one of the most beautiful houses in Moscow, sit Woland and Azazello, hidden from the street by a balustrade of plaster vases and flowers, watching the city almost to its edges. Here they receive Levi Matvei, the disciple of Yeshua, who asks Woland to give the Master and Margarita peace. The request is granted, and Woland sends Azazello to arrange everything. The house, built in 1784–1786 for Pyotr Pashkov, overlooks the western wall of the Kremlin and now belongs to the Russian State Library.

Visitor guidance: The house stands on a hill beside the Kremlin's western wall, near the crossing of Mokhovaya and Vozdvizhenka streets.

The penultimate chapter is called "On the Sparrow Hills". At night a group of flying riders leaves Moscow: Woland, his retinue, and the author of the Pilate novel with his beloved. On the journey the Master frees Pilate, and the Master and Margarita settle in their eternal, peaceful home, while Moscow returns to normal. The hills rise on the Moskva's right bank, one of the highest points in the city, with the Novodevichy Convent and its Naryshkin Baroque towers close by.

Location precision: The chapter names the hills but no exact spot; the pin marks the observation platform above the river.

Visitor guidance: The observation platform, built in 1948, looks out over the Moskva River.