The Bulgakov Museum in Moscow commemorates the life and work of author Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov in an apartment where he lived in Moscow, Russia, and in which he set portions of his novel The Master and Margarita. Graffiti, including text from the novel and drawings of its characters, have decorated the external walls and stairwells of the apartment building since the beginning of perestroika. It is located about two blocks from Patriarch Ponds, the scene of the opening chapter of the novel, where the Moscow city government had planned to erect statues commemorating the novel.