Moscow museums · Architecture and estates
Architecture and estates · since 1929
The Melnikov House
The only dwelling in the world made of two cylinders cut into each other and pierced throughout with hexagonal windows — and the only private house an architect was permitted to build for himself in the Moscow of 1927. Neither he nor anyone else could repeat the case. It belongs to the world canon of twentieth-century architecture beside Rietveld’s Schröder House and the Villa Savoye, and the rating here is given not to a collection of things but to the building: in a house-museum the house is the collection. The family’s furnishings survive inside.
Minimum route
1 hour
Founded
1929
The museum is currently closed to visitors.
What to see
The building itself, 1927–1929: two cylinders, hexagonal windows, a studio without a single support. The bedroom with its monolithic furniture growing out of the floor. The furnishings of the Melnikov family, which lived on into the museum.
Minimum route — 1 hour for the essentials
One hour, the length of one slot.
- 20 minutesthe ground floor and the stair between the cylinders.
- 25 minutesthe studio with its thirty-eight windows: the chief room of the house.
- 15 minutesthe bedroom and the terrace.
Reference
About the museum
Built by Konstantin Melnikov for his own family in 1927–1929. A branch of the Shchusev Museum of Architecture. Restoration ran from 2022 and is complete; opening is promised for the end of 2026.
The building
Two brick cylinders cut into one another by a third of their width. The walls are laid as a lattice leaving hexagonal openings: some glazed, some filled in — which allowed the house to do without a frame and without a single support inside.
Good to know
The house is a dwelling by design and fragile by condition: entry will be by appointment and in small groups only. The rating is given to the building, not to what can be seen today — today one cannot go in.
What to read
Pavel Kuznetsov, “The Melnikov House: Icon of the Avant-Garde, Family Home, Architecture Museum” — the fullest account in English, with the measured drawings that explain why there are two cylinders. Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2017.
ISBN 9783869224367
Getting in
How to get there
Metro Smolenskaya or Arbatskaya, then along the Arbat and into the courtyard of Krivoarbatsky Lane.
Opening times
The museum is closed to visitors.
Closed: the restoration is finished and the house is promised to visitors by the end of 2026. Entry will be by appointment and in small groups — the house allows nothing else.
Tickets
by prior booking only
When to go
When it opens — by appointment and in a small group. The house is small and physically will not bear more than a few people at once.
Contacts
Of interest to children
Not checked: the museum is closed.
· No. 70