The key facts
- Two cross-shaped buildings of Kresty will house hotels with 262 rooms — 136 four-star and 126 five-star
- The management company is Cosmos Hotel Group; the agreement with the investor was signed in June 2026, with the opening in 2030
- Some cell walls will be demolished, but the historic vaults and galleries will be restored, and cell doors will become museum exhibits
From cells to hotel rooms
Two hotels will open in the former St. Petersburg pre-trial detention facility Kresty — details of the project have been disclosed in documents of the city committee for the protection of monuments (KGIOP), which Life.ru writes about. Two main cross-shaped buildings, which gave the prison its name, will be converted into hotels. In the first, rooms will be fitted out on four floors, with a restaurant and gym on the ground floor, and a museum, kitchen and technical rooms in the basement. The second building, closer to the Neva River, will focus on more comfortable stays: its own restaurant, rooms and a spa complex on the underground level.
Two hotels and 262 rooms
In total, the former prison is planned to have 262 hotel rooms. The four-star hotel with 136 rooms will be aimed at business travelers — a large conference hall is provided for them. The five-star hotel is designed for 126 rooms, including family rooms. Both properties will be managed by Cosmos Hotel Group, with which the investor signed an agreement in June 2026. The opening is scheduled for 2030.
What will be preserved and what will be rebuilt
Converting the prison buildings into hotels will require substantial reconstruction: partial demolition of the walls separating the cells, installation of elevators, new staircases and glazed passages. At the same time, the historic brick vaults and metal galleries are to be restored, and some of the surviving solitary confinement cell doors will be turned into museum exhibits. After restoration, museum routes will be run through the complex — a Detective route about high-profile investigations and escapes, and a Connection route about the fates of prisoners, while a separate museum will appear in the underground part of the first building.
The prison that became a tourist hit
Interest in the complex is also confirmed by recent experience: as Life.ru reported, tickets for tours of Kresty sold out in just two hours in February — no more than 20 visitors could enter at a time, while there were far more people wanting to get in. The history of the place explains the excitement: the complex on the Arsenalnaya Embankment was built to a design by architect Antoniy Tomishko; in the first building alone there were 498 solitary cells by 1887, and Lev Trotsky, Joseph Brodsky, Konstantin Rokossovsky and others passed through its walls. The detention facility ceased operating in 2017 after inmates were transferred to a new complex in Kolpino, and now the territory, closed to city residents for decades, is to be made a publicly accessible space with hotels, museums, restaurants and walking areas.
