A book from Tom Sawyer Fest, "Domostroy. Reboot", which contains 30 different stories about how investors started working with historical real estate. Most of them were driven to action by the thought “if not me, then who?”. A review of materials on heroes who love and preserve heritage in more than just words.

To mark the International Day of Monuments and Historic Sites, St. Petersburg will host the XVI Restorer of the Year 2025 professional skills competition and the conference "Cultural Heritage. Preservation through development and development through preservation".

The events will be held as part of the XXXI International Exhibition “InterStroyExpo” from April 15 to 17 in Expoforum. The organizers are KGIOP and the Union of Restorers of St. Petersburg.

April 12 - 13, 2025

Annual Scientific and Practical Conference "Wooden Architecture. Issues of study and preservation of monuments".

April 12, beginning at 10:30

Moscow, Shokalskogo pr., 48, Church of St. Seraphim of Sarov in Raevo, conference hall.

April 13, beginning at 11:00

Moscow, 16-18 Pokrovsky Boulevard,

entrance from the boulevard, left porch, All-Russian Society for the Protection of Monuments of History and Culture.

Organizers of the event:

- ANO Research and restoration of wooden architecture monuments “Tradition”;

- Project "Common Cause. Revival of wooden temples of the North".

"Preserve not develop"․

Where to put the comma?

On April 10, on the territory of the reconstructed Levashovsky bakery a discussion on the preservation and restoration of the historical center of St. Petersburg will take place.

The Baka House in St. Petersburg restored its pre-revolutionary doors.

In the house 24 on Kirochnaya Street on the initiative and efforts of the residents themselves restored the historic doors in the front porches.

The story of restoration began in 2017, when the residents of the house became aware that several doors from the front porches ended up in the Rubinstein Café, where they were used for interior design. From the profitable house, built in the early XX century by architect Julian Bak, they disappeared back in the late 1990s: the public utilities then replaced the wooden doors with iron ones.

By the time the two pairs of historic doors were found, the residents of the house had already created a community in social networks, which was engaged in a project to return the building to its historic appearance.

Each front door is a whole complex of objects: two pairs of wooden doors, a vestibule between them with ceramic tiles on the floor, wooden doors on the sides of the vestibule and its heating system. The surviving historic doors were restored, the missing two pairs were recreated using their samples, the upper glazed transoms above the doors and the flooring were restored, and the door handles were recreated using available photographs.

And now, almost seven years after the beginning of this epic, two pairs of historical doors and two pairs of doors recreated from their samples have taken their original place in the two front entrances.

Already today in the Gatchina Palace opens a unique exhibition "Alexander III. Personal. Auditor".

This year marks the 180th anniversary of the birth of Emperor Alexander III. It is he who is famous for his words about the Gatchina Palace - “Happy to be home again!” Now the restoration of his private rooms is in progress, and therefore a gift for visitors has been prepared - during the year there will be four exhibitions of one object, which will show four things from the personal collection of Alexander Alexandrovich, representing different aspects of his hobbies.

The first exhibition from the cycle "Alexander III. Personal“ is dedicated to the book ”The Inspector", which belonged to the Emperor.

At last the monograph by the prominent St. Petersburg researcher, architectural historian and art critic - M.N.Mikishcheyev ( 1945-2020 ), devoted to the task of in-depth study and analysis of the creative method of the architect Carlo Rossi ( 1775-1849 ), is out of print. On the examples of architectural masterpieces of Rossi, formulated in detail the principles called by the author “algorithm of design creativity” genius architect. The application and development of these principles allowed the architect, without repeating, to create architectural ensembles, unique in their scale and complexity.

The research is illustrated by design drawings of the architect, historical and modern photography.

Mikhail Nikolaevich in his time often visited the ACM office when our team was working on restoration projects of buildings built by Rossi.

Today the architects of “ACM Group” will continue complex scientific research at the tower complexes “Salgi”, “Barkhan”, ‘Gu’ and “Tori” in the mountainous Ingushetia. In addition, it is planned to visit the watchtowers “Ga'gi G1alash”.

The second part of the collection of letters about the history of St. Petersburg houses from the authors of the newsletter “Papers” - “Behind the Facade” is released.

The book contains 30 letters about the history of St. Petersburg houses, which was prepared by local historians Alexey Shishkin and Elia Novopashenaya. It includes letters from the closed newsletter “Paper” - from the home of the writer Ayn Rand, to the communal house where Mike Naumenko lived.

“When studying old buildings, we create an emotional connection to their history, so in this book the emphasis, as in the first edition, is not so much on the history of the houses themselves as on their inhabitants,” the authors note.

On April 10 there will be a tour of the former profitable house of the insurance company “Russia”, located at 35 Bolshaya Morskaya Street in St. Petersburg. The history of one of the landmark buildings of St. Petersburg Northern Art Nouveau, decorative decoration of the facade, unique interiors and much more await visitors. The building was erected in 1905-1907 by architect A.A.Gimpel, with the participation of V.V.Ilyashev.

Already today, archaeologist, architect, employee of the KGIOP and member of the “Old Petersburg” society Victor Korentsvit invites to the Izmailovskaya library for a lecture devoted to the glorious and sad history of the granite embankments of the Neva, rivers and canals of St. Petersburg. The main concern of the researcher is that repair works on embankments should not distort their classic appearance.

Everyone is well aware of the House of the Emir of Bukhara in St. Petersburg, on the Petrograd side.

And what do you know about the Palace of the Emir of Bukhara in Zheleznovodsk?

Last week volunteers of the Piatigorsk “Tom Soeyer Fest” carried out work on the majolica created in 1909 in the workshop of Geldwein-Vaulin in St. Petersburg, cleaned and restored the entrance portal in this palace.

As told in the social networks of the festival, the wicket was made from two sheets of iron, and the historical pattern was laser-cut. In addition, volunteers plan to create replicas of lost tiles (ceramic tiles used to cover stoves, walls and fireplaces).

The palace of the Emir of Bukhara is also being restored. They promise to complete the work at the end of October 2025.

At present, the talk about the complete absence of any mortars in the construction of tower complexes in the North Caucasus is actively continuing.

The other day, specialists from ACM Group visited another tower complex in the mountains of Ingushetia untouched by restoration - “Gyagi G1alash” (probably not the historical name), where one of the research questions was about the historical use of mortars. It was recorded that every surviving structure of the complex has not just remnants of historical lime mortar, but its extensive presence.

Two bridges over the Fontanka River will be restored in St. Petersburg: the Lomonosov Bridge and the Obukhovsky Bridge will be repaired. Project documentation should be prepared by the end of May 2026.

It will be necessary to provide for the restoration of the bridge vault, intermediate piers and decorative elements, railings, metal span structures, as well as the repair of the road and sidewalks.

The Russian Museum presented watercolor works of Vasily Sadovnikov, a Pushkin-era artist with views of St. Petersburg, at the Mikhailovsky Castle.

This year marks the 225th anniversary of the outstanding Russian watercolorist Vasily Sadovnikov ( 1800-1879 ). One of the most famous creations of the master is the “Panorama of Nevsky Prospekt” - a work that has not only not lost its artistic value, but also acquired a huge historical and cultural heritage, remaining one of the sources of historians and restorers when working on the buildings of Nevsky Prospekt.

The jubilee exhibition includes about 140 works by the master and is mainly composed of exhibits from the Russian Museum, but is also supplemented by 13 works from the State Hermitage Museum, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, and the Tsarskoye Selo and Peterhof Museum Reserves.

Thousands of old estates in Russia are slowly disappearing. But there are those who are saving them - without high-profile budgets, but by the efforts of volunteers, patrons of the arts and simply romantics.

The reminder movie “Dreams of estates” is dedicated to this topical theme. Unique shots of Russian architecture that you won't see anywhere else, as well as people whose devotion to history inspires respect - artists, photographers, enthusiasts.

While exploring tower complexes in the mountainous Ingushetia, ACM Group specialists periodically come across fresh paw prints and footprints of bears, which are quite abundant in the gorges and mountains. The size of the paw prints is impressive and gives additional caution when visiting the complexes. Photo from the gorge along the Assa River when approaching the Gyagi G1alash Tower Complex.

From July 10 to 12 in the ancient Russian city of Rybinsk in the north-west of the Yaroslavl region will be held VI International Forum of wooden construction “Wood in Architecture”. Participants and guests of the forum will be welcomed by a unique architectural space, where centuries-old traditions of wooden architecture will meet with advanced technologies of the present.

Carlo Ratti, curator of the XIX International Architecture Biennale, came up with an interesting theme: "Intellectuals. Natural. Artificial. Collective." Behind the play of words, where the mind is fused with genes, there is a decisive proposal: to equalize artificial intelligence and nature in human rights.

Each of the three sections of the main exposition is conceived as a fractal space - an organism that connects different projects, creating a dialog of natural (natural), artificial (technological) and collective (social, human) intelligences. Global issues such as rising temperatures and demographic shifts are touched upon here.

Ratti comes to the conclusion that space exploration is not the answer - we need to “build a world with intelligence here on Earth, listening to the intelligence of the world”.

Photo: Elephant Chapel installation project by Thai architect Boonserm Premtada.

A Japanese anime set in St. Petersburg has been released. The thriller from Geno Studio “Your Form” is about an alternative future with cyberpunk elements and with “smart threads” for recording memories. St. Petersburg is at least in the first episode, which shows the subway, the Griboedov Canal, the Galereya shopping mall, Palace Square and other places in the city.

Great news from fellow restorers. UNESCO has completed the restoration of Mosul's cultural heritage sites damaged by ISIL.

Al Sa'a Monastery, founded in 1870 after the first papal mission sent to Mesopotamia, received new bells as part of extensive work to bring it back to life. The Dominican institution has historically served a variety of functions, housing a church, schools, seminary, hospital and more.

The monastery was home to an archive of ancient religious manuscripts that was narrowly saved shortly before the building was turned into an ISIL prison and smuggled out of the city. The monastery's priest - Najib Michael, now Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul - and his team, members of the community, managed to do so.

On the left: Al Sa'a Monastery under restoration. On the right: after the work is completed.