Moscow museums · Art
Art · since 2006
The Museum of the Russian Icon
Mikhail Abramov Museum of the Russian Icon
original name: Музей русской иконы имени Михаила Абрамова
For Ethiopian Christian art it is the only collection in Russia; for the Russian icon it competes with state museums. Add a circumstance almost unheard of anywhere in the world for a collection of this level: admission is free.
Minimum route
1.5 hours
Founded
2006
Ticket
free entry
Today
11:00–19:00
What to see
The Russian icon of the 14th to 20th century, from Novgorod panels to Old Believer painting; Ethiopian Christian art, the only such collection in Russia; a reconstructed iconostasis and post-Byzantine Greek icons.
Minimum route — 1.5 hours for the essentials
Go up floor by floor: Greek and Ethiopian art, then the Russian icon by century. Do not miss the iconostasis and the Old Believer hall.
Reference
About the museum
The largest private collection of Eastern Christian art in Russia: about five thousand items on four floors. Founded in 2006 by the entrepreneur Mikhail Abramov, who died in 2019; the museum works on and keeps entry free.
The building
A town house on the Taganka hill, converted for the museum.
Good to know
The only museum of this level in Moscow that you enter free and without a ticket.
What to read
Leonid Ouspensky, “Theology of the Icon in the Orthodox Church” — after it, an icon stops being a picture on a board.
ISBN 9780881411232
Getting in
How to get there
Metro Taganskaya, entrance from Bolshoy Vatin Lane
Opening timeschecked 15 August 2026, open sources
closed for the day
| Mon, Tue, Sat, Sun today | 11:00–19:00 |
| Wed | closed |
| Thu, Fri | 11:00–21:00 |
Admission free. Guided tours to the timetable on the website.
Ticketschecked 15 August 2026, open sources
Free for everyone.
When to go
Thursday and Friday until 21:00. Entry is free, but weekends bring guided groups.
Contacts
russikona.ru · +7 (495) 098-02-99
Of interest to children
Icons say almost nothing to children; come as an adult.
Access for visitors with limited mobility
The museum — step-free. A lift to all four floors, level floors, an accessible toilet. Entry is free, and so is the companion’s.
Getting there — step-free. Taganskaya has no lift. There is a parking bay on Goncharnaya. Moscow metro stations almost never have lifts to the platform, except on the Big Circle line and the MCC. A wheelchair user is better served by the surface buses, which are low-floor across the centre.
Getting there — step-free. Taganskaya has no lift. There is a parking bay on Goncharnaya. Moscow metro stations almost never have lifts to the platform, except on the Big Circle line and the MCC. A wheelchair user is better served by the surface buses, which are low-floor across the centre.
If this moved you
In the same city
If you realised here that you were looking at an object and not a picture, in Lavrushinsky the same objects stand as the beginning of a school of painting.
If Eastern Christian art came as a discovery, the Oriental Museum carries it further east — to Buddhist Buryatia and to Iran.
· No. 54