The Twelve Chairs: Bender's Road to the Caucasus

The novel opens in 1927 with Vorobyaninov, a former nobleman, registering births and deaths in a sleepy provincial town. When he comes back to Stargorod after years away, he finds the people, the shop signs and even the colours changed, and he stares at tram rails he has never seen before. Some historians and local scholars think Syzran was the model; it has since put up a Bender monument (2024) and a museum (2025).

Location precision: Stargorod is invented; some historians point to Syzran as its model, but that is a local-history claim, and the pin marks Syzran only as that candidate.

In Moscow the partners learn the chairs were split up and sold on, so the hunt turns into a scramble. Vorobyaninov tries to dazzle Liza by taking her to the Prague, and the novel's dining room is a real one: in the 1920s the building held a model canteen of Mosselprom. It stands in a historic building on Arbat Square and is now a regional heritage site, closed for restoration.

Down the Volga the partners are put ashore at Vasyuki, a town they first meet in a river guidebook. There Bender bamboozles a village chess club with the promise of an international tournament, an interplanetary one, and a town renamed New Moscow. Ilf's 1925 notes suggest the town took features of Kozmodemyansk, a typical overnight stop for Volga steamers between Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan.

Location precision: Vasyuki is invented; Ilf's travel notes suggest Kozmodemyansk on the Volga as its model, and the pin marks that town.

Broke in Pyatigorsk, Bender buys a receipt book with his last money and heads for the Proval, a natural well on the slope of Mount Mashuk, to charge tourists for what had always been free. Free entry, he declares, is a stain on the town's reputation. The funnel is about 15 metres wide, with a lake 11 metres deep; since 2008 a metal statue of Bender with a chair stands at the entrance.

Visitor guidance: A natural karst well on the southern slope of Mount Mashuk; Bender's statue stands at the entrance.

The partners cross the Caucasus on foot, and in the Darial Gorge Bender proposes carving a rock inscription at the Gates of the Caucasus: "Kisa and Osya were here." Father Fyodor, their rival, catches Vorobyaninov off guard right here. The gorge was one of only two crossings of the Caucasus range, and the Georgian Military Road, 212 km between Tbilisi and Vladikavkaz, runs through it.

Location precision: The novel names the Darial Gorge but not the exact rock; the pin marks the gorge as a whole.

The partners reach Yalta after reading that the Columbus Theatre is touring Crimea. The arrival of the steamer Pestel echoes Chekhov's The Lady with the Dog, and the chair falling through the theatre floor echoes the first shock of the 1927 Crimean earthquake. The hunt only ends later, away from Crimea: the jewels have already paid for a new recreation centre, where the last chair stands.

Location precision: The novel does not name the theatre's street; the pin marks Yalta town.