The city of The Master and Margarita
Moscow is a complicated city. A city as a confusing dra-ma with a dark and absurd intrigue. It's a spectacle full of surprises. The city and the life in it are closely connected.
Buildings from different eras are standing next to each other, often in a chaotic way. As if they want to emphasi-ze the incoherence - and not the coherence - of the different epochs.
Those words were once written by the Russian translator Dmitri Silvestrov, and they illustrate perfectly why the story of The Master and Margarita could only happen there.
Bulgakov's major talent is in how he is capable to transform his impres-sions and deceptions into satire. He works secretly on The Master and Margarita during the repression in the thirties. It turns into a glorification of freedom and a gorgeous love story, but also into a book by which he took revenge on the soviet literators for thwarting him. No wonder that many characters, locations and houses are fictitious only on the face of things. Sometimes it's a piece of cake to find out about what Bulgakov is talking, but sometimes it needs more insight - which we want to offer with this website.
In this part of the website we're looking for similarities with real locations and buildings. In the section Characters we do the same for the people described in the novel.
The city of Pilate and Ha-Nozri
The descriptions of the places in which the biblical story is situated, are historically very accurate. We can observe it by visiting Ir David or the City of David. The Ir David Foundation, a non-profit organization established in 1986 by the former Israeli military commander David Be'eri (David'le), is dedicated to the preservation and development of the Biblical City of David and its environs.
Click here to visit the website of Ir David
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locations
Moscow map
Have a look at the most important places from the novel at a single glance on a clickable map of Moscow.
Virtual tour of Yershalaim
Have a look at all the places of Yershalaim seen from the air, from the Antonia Tower to the palace of Herod.