"The Cellar of the Stray Dog" was a literary-artistic cabaret and became one of the key places in the cultural life of the Silver Age. This café, or art cellar, operated from December 31, 1911, to March 3, 1915, in house No. 5 on Mikhailovskaya Square in Petrograd. The name of the establishment symbolized the artist as a stray dog.

The cabaret was opened by entrepreneur Boris Pronin on the eve of 1912 in the basement of the Zhako house, and it closed in the spring of 1915, at the height of World War I, shortly after Mayakovsky's anti-war speech. The walls of the café were adorned with paintings by artist Sudeikin. The venue hosted theatrical performances, lectures, as well as poetry and music evenings. Many poems and musical works were first heard here, as numerous memories attest.

The fame of "The Cellar of the Stray Dog" was made by its famous visitors: Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Gumilyov, Severyanin, Mayakovsky, Meyerhold, Kuzmin, Lurie, Balmont, and others. Guests usually gathered after midnight and dispersed only by morning. Twenty years later, Benedict Livshits left an ironic description of the creative atmosphere of this place in his memoirs: "Akhmatova, in black silk and with a cameo at her waist, entered, pausing at the entrance to write her latest poems in the 'pig' book at Pronin's request.

Gumilyov, in a long frock coat and black tie, did not miss a single beautiful woman, backing up between tables as if observing court etiquette or fearing a 'dagger-like glance in the back'."