Moscow museums · Unusual
Unusual · since 2021
The Museum of Cryptography
The only museum in Russia about the cipher and about how a message reaches the person it is meant for — a subject nobody else takes up. It is made to present-day museum standards: object, explanation and working mechanism stand on equal terms, and it can be followed without a guide. A holding of world rank there is not and cannot be: the subject is young. Bletchley Park tells the story of the men who broke the machine; here the machine itself is put in a line six thousand years long, and Enigma is one entry in it. And a separate circumstance: the building is the former Marfino sharashka, a prison for scientists where Solzhenitsyn was held and about which In the First Circle was written. The museum says so plainly.
Minimum route
1.5–2 hours
Founded
2021
Ticket
from ₽1,000
Today
11:00–20:00
What to see
Cipher machines of the twentieth century, the German Enigma among them. Soviet scrambling apparatus. Sections on the ciphers of antiquity and on cryptography now. A display about the Marfino sharashka, within its own walls.
Minimum route — 1.5–2 hours for the essentials
An hour and a half.
- 25 minutesciphers from antiquity to the First World War.
- 35 minutesmachine cryptography of the twentieth century, Enigma and the Soviet apparatus.
- 20 minutesthe sharashka: the history of the building.
- 10 minutesthe present day: networks and keys.
Reference
About the museum
Opened in December 2021 in the building of a former institute of automation, and before that of the Marfino special prison of the state security service. A private museum, made with the support of the Infotecs company.
The building
A block of the late 1940s put up for a closed research institute. The restoration of 2019–2021 kept both the volume and the staircases; the museum has not hidden what the building was.
Good to know
The display is meant to be read and handled, and it cannot be got through quickly. About the sharashka it speaks without reticence, which is worth knowing if you are coming with children.
What to read
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “In the First Circle” — the novel was written about this very building when it was the Marfino sharashka. A rare case of a book and a museum standing on one foundation. New York: Harper Perennial, 2009.
ISBN 9780061479014
Getting in
How to get there
Metro Vladykino, exit 2, then on foot or by bus m2, 524, 599, 561k to the stop Ulitsa Akademika Komarova.
Opening timeschecked on 16 August 2026, the museum website
closed for the day
| Mon | closed |
| Tue–Sun today | 11:00–20:00 |
last admission 30 min before closing
Closed Mondays. Admission to the display closes at 19:30.
Tickets
The permanent display 1000 ₽; school and concession 500 ₽. A temporary exhibition 500 ₽; school and concession 300 ₽. A combined ticket to both 1200 ₽; school and concession 600 ₽.
from ₽1,000
tickets online
When to go
Weekdays towards evening: the museum works until eight and by that hour the rooms empty. There is much to read here and much to try by hand, and in a crowd that does not work.
Contacts
Of interest to children
Ciphers interest children, but there is a great deal of text and it is written for adults. From 10; younger only for the interactive stands.
On now
27 June — 22 November 2026
What convenience is paid for: where trust in the digital world ends and the defence of one’s own data begins. The museum marks it 12+.
· No. 72