At the corner of Chertolsky Lane and Prechistenka there is house No. 10/2, which is of great interest to historians and everyone interested in the past of the Russian capital. The building, erected in the 18th century and originally owned by Prince I. M. Odoevsky, in 1831 was acquired by the nephew of the imperial favorite, major general, participant in the war of 1812 Mikhail Fedorovich Orlov.

General Orlov was forced to serve his sentence in this house as one of the organizers of the Decembrist uprising. If it were not for the intercession of his brother, statesman and chief of the Moscow gendarmerie, Prince Alexei Orlov, the general would have suffered exactly the same sad fate as the rest of the instigators Decembrist uprising. General Orlov was closely acquainted with Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. Like the great Russian poet, he was a member of the literary society “Arzamas”. The general's wife, Ekaterina, later became the prototype of one of the heroines of the drama “Boris Godunov”.

After the death of General Orlov in 1842, the house on Prechistenka Street was sold. At the end of the 19th century, the famous Russian artist Isaak Ilyich Levitan lived and worked in its furnished rooms, and Anton Pavlovich Chekhov often visited him.