Moscow museums · Architecture and estates
Architecture and estates · since 2020
The Narkomfin Building
The 1930 house by Ginzburg and Milinis is the transitional commune-house with which any conversation about twentieth-century housing begins: two-level units, a corridor every second floor, kitchen and laundry taken out of the flat. Le Corbusier knew this building and leaned on it in the Unité d’habitation at Marseille — the ribbon window, the pilotis and the interlocking sections are all here first. But expectations must be squared honestly: the restoration of 2017–2020 gave the house back to its residents, and the museum here is one restored unit, not a building. Looking is done from outside and in a single flat, by appointment.
Minimum route
1–1.5 hours
Founded
2020
Ticket
from ₽1,700
Today
10:00–22:00
What to see
A restored type F unit, furnished to Ginzburg’s drawings. The building itself: the residential block on columns, the communal block, the bridge between them.
Minimum route — 1–1.5 hours for the essentials
An hour.
- 25 minuteswalk round the outside and work out the arrangement: columns, ribbon window, communal block.
- 35 minutesthe type F unit from within, with an explanation of how it was lived in.
Reference
About the museum
Built by Moisei Ginzburg and Ignaty Milinis in 1928–1930 for the staff of the People’s Commissariat of Finance. The restoration led by Alexei Ginzburg, the architect’s grandson, was completed in 2020, and the museum flat opened then.
The building
A constructivist monument of world standing: the residential block is lifted on columns, the units are on two levels, the corridor runs through every other floor. Collectivised living — kitchen, laundry, gymnasium — was moved into a separate block.
Good to know
The building is lived in, and the museum within it is one flat. That is exactly why the rating is 3: the architecture is of the first rank, and of museum there is almost none.
What to read
Moisei Ginzburg, “Style and Epoch” — the manifesto out of which this house grew. Written four years before it was built, and it reads like its working drawing. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982.
Getting in
How to get there
Metro Barrikadnaya or Smolenskaya, seven minutes on foot along Novinsky Boulevard.
Opening timeschecked on 17 August 2026, open sources
closed for the day
| Mon–Sun today | 10:00–22:00 |
By prior appointment; the building is lived in and there is no walking in.
Tickets
When to go
A bright day, and by appointment without fail. The building is lived in: coming on the off-chance is pointless, and the courtyard will simply not be opened.
Contacts
Of interest to children
A conversation about how housing is arranged is not addressed to children. Better to come without them.
· No. 74