Moscow museums · Art
Art · since 1947
The Rublev Museum
The Andrei Rublev Museum of Early Russian Culture and Art
The third collection of Russian icons after the Tretyakov and the Russian Museum, and the only one built as a museum of one subject: here the icon does not stand in a row of Russian art but is explained in itself, from the board and the gesso to the iconography. The holding was formed from things brought out by the museum’s expeditions from closed and ruined churches, and its value is the completeness of the line rather than single stars: famous names are almost absent, but the sequence runs unbroken from the thirteenth century to the seventeenth. In Britain icons are met in ones and twos, in Byzantine rooms and in the trade; a museum where the subject has a building of its own does not exist there. The monastery’s Saviour Cathedral, in which all this stands, is the oldest surviving building in Moscow.
Minimum route
1.5–2 hours
Founded
1947
Ticket
from ₽450
Today
closed today
What to see
Icons of the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries, gathered by the museum’s own expeditions. Royal doors and whole iconostasis sets. Fragments of wall painting. The Saviour Cathedral of the 1420s — the oldest building in Moscow, with remains of ornamental painting associated with Rublev.
Minimum route — 1.5–2 hours for the essentials
An hour and a half.
- 15 minutesthe Saviour Cathedral: the fabric itself and the fragments of painting in the window reveals.
- 45 minutesthe permanent display in the abbot’s lodgings: icons by century, from pre-Mongol echoes to the seventeenth.
- 20 minutesthe exhibition hall in the refectory.
- 10 minutesround the monastery yard: the burial ground and the seventeenth-century walls.
Reference
About the museum
Founded in 1947 and opened to the public in 1960, the six hundredth year since Andrei Rublev. It occupies the Andronikov Monastery of the Saviour, founded in 1357. The holding runs to some thirteen thousand items.
The building
The Saviour Cathedral was built in the 1420s and remains the oldest building in Moscow. The rest of the monastery is of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: refectory, church of the Archangel Michael, and the abbot’s lodgings where the display stands.
Good to know
An icon has to be read: without explanation a row of boards runs together into one. A guide is worth taking here even by those who normally go alone. There is a working church on the grounds, with its own rules.
What to read
Robin Cormack, “Icons” — a hundred and fifty pages that teach the reading of an icon: what is depicted, what is quoted and what is required by the place it hangs in. London: British Museum Press, 2007.
ISBN 9780674026193
Getting in
How to get there
Metro Ploshchad Ilyicha, Rimskaya or Chkalovskaya — about ten minutes on foot from each. The monastery grounds are open longer than the museum and free to enter.
Opening timeschecked on 16 August 2026, the museum website
closed today
| Mon, Tue, Fri, Sat | 11:00–19:00 |
| Wed today | closed |
| Thu | 13:00–21:00 |
| Sun | 11:00–18:00 |
last admission 45 min before closing
Closed on Wednesdays. Tickets stop 45 minutes before closing. The monastery grounds are open daily 9:00–21:00, free.
Tickets
Audio guidechecked on 17 August 2026, the museum website
museum player · for an extra charge
Hire at the desk: 300 ₽ for the permanent display, 200 ₽ for the exhibition, 400 ₽ for both; no deposit. For the grounds there is a free audio guide on izi.TRAVEL, from your own phone.
When to go
A weekday before noon. There are never crowds here, but icons want side light, and it is better in the first half of the day. On Thursdays the museum is open until nine — the one day it can be reached after work.
Contacts
Of interest to children
Icons say next to nothing to children, and it is hard to explain even to an adult. Better to come without them.
· No. 61