Kolya Vasin Beatles Museum in St Petersburg

Kolya Vasin's Beatles museum is still open. It occupies Vasin's former flat and office in the Pushkinskaya-10 art centre, entered from Ligovsky prospekt 53 in St Petersburg. Vasin, who died in 2018, collected Beatles material from the 1960s. Today the city's Beatles community keeps the collection and runs ticketed guided tours.

Who Kolya Vasin was

Nikolai Ivanovich Vasin, known to everyone as Kolya, was born in Leningrad on 24 August 1945. He got hooked on the Beatles in 1964, and by 1966, according to Andrey Burlaka's encyclopedia of Leningrad rock, he had turned his flat into a Beatles museum. He held membership card No. 1 of the Leningrad Rock Club when it formed in 1981. For years he also organised concerts in the city for the Beatles' birthdays.

His best-known possession was a copy of the 1969 live album Live Peace in Toronto, which he said John Lennon had signed and sent him. Fontanka later called that record the most valuable item in the collection.

The temple that was never built

From 1990 Vasin campaigned for a Temple of Love, Peace and Music named after John Lennon, to be built in St Petersburg. On 19 January 1992 he became president of a committee to build it, and at one point the city set aside a site at the mouth of the Smolenka river on Vasilyevsky Island, on condition that he sort out the technical side himself. The temple never went up. Its name ended up on the door of his office at Pushkinskaya-10, where the museum and his flat had moved in the 1990s, and it is still how many people search for the place.

What happened after 2018

Vasin died in St Petersburg on 29 August 2018. On 2 September, once news of his death came out, the museum office at Pushkinskaya-10 was sealed. In February 2019 his nephew Mikhail Vasin was named sole heir. The art centre's board kept the collection where it was, and the centre's Free Culture partnership announced a museum named after Kolya Vasin.

That museum took time. When a courtyard concert presented a model of it in June 2019, Fontanka reported that nobody could yet say who would pay for it, when it would open or who would staff it. In the end the premises went to the St Petersburg Beatles community behind the city's Beatles music festival. According to the museum, the community looks after the collection and keeps adding to it.

Visiting in 2026

Visits are by guided tour, in sessions for up to 10 people. The tour lasts about 45 minutes and takes you into Vasin's former flat, and afterwards you have time to look around on your own. In September 2026 the Russian ticket page listed sessions from Wednesday to Friday, 14:30 to 19:00, and at weekends from 12:30 to 19:00, closed Monday and Tuesday. The English page gives an earlier closing time of 18:00, so check before you go. A full ticket costs 1,000 roubles, a concession 800, and children aged 5 to 7 go free. A service fee is added. Tours in English can be requested in advance.

To find it, go through the arch at Ligovsky prospekt 53, then through the art centre's doors into the courtyard. A Beatles mural leads to a multicoloured door in the arch, and that's the museum. A "John Lennon Street" sign on a courtyard wall has been there since at least 2008 and is not an official street name. Beatles bas-reliefs and a Yellow Submarine relief are on the wall of the old temple office.

The museum also runs events. Its September 2026 programme included an exhibition by artists of the Mitki group, marking the Leningrad Rock Club's 45th anniversary, and a Beatles and classic rock festival on 4 October. Earlier editions of that festival brought Pete Best, Tony Sheridan and The Quarrymen to the city.