The Yusupoff Stable, Helsinki

The Yusupoff Stable was once part of the Rauhaniemi (“Headland of Peace”) summer estate in the Kaivopuisto district of Helsinki. It belonged to the Russian Princess Zenaida Yusupova who built it in the 1840s. The Neo-Gothic wooden stable has four stalls, a carriage shed, one room downstairs and one above. The exterior wooden walls are painted to resemble a brick structure. The stable was brought to Seurasaari in 1918.

Zeneida Yusupova was a true celebrity in the highest aristocratic circles of Imperial Russia and was a member of one of the wealthiest families in Saint Petersburg. At one point she had a stormy romance with a young revolutionary. After he was captured, convicted and imprisoned in the Sveaborg (Suomenlinna) fortress in Finland, she followed him there. Yusupova bought herself a house on a hill opposite the fortress from which she could see the window of the cell in which her lover served time. Rumors have it that she had arranged his escape, and the revolutionary spent the rest of his life hiding in her palace in Saint Petersburg.

Reportedly, when he died, the Princess hid his body behind a secret door. After the Revolution, the Bolsheviks found that secret door, and behind it - a male skeleton wrapped up in a shroud...