Museums near The Gulag History Museum

History · since 1872

The Historical Museum

world-class

A collection of material sources on Russian history unmatched for completeness: archaeology, numismatics, arms and manuscripts in one sequence, five million objects. And a rarity of another kind — Sherwood’s fully preserved Russian Revival interior, a monument in itself.

A dugout boat some 3,500 years old; the Mstislav Gospel of the early 12th century; the helmet of Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich; a Blaeu globe; personal belongings of Peter the Great. Look up: the halls themselves are painted after Old Russian models and count as an exhibit.

2.4 km from here · Red Square 1 · ·

· No. 6

Art · since 1918

The Museum of Oriental Art

outstanding

Western museums of the East were formed by colonial routes; this collection grew out of nationalised private collections and Soviet expeditions. Hence the Central Asian, Caucasian, Buryat and Chukchi sections that London and Paris lack: there the East begins with India and Egypt, here with what lay inside the country and next to it. That is the reason to come.

Central Asian and Caucasian carpets and metalwork transferred from the State Museum Fund; Iranian Qajar painting and tilework; Chinese bronze and porcelain, Japanese prints; a Korean section rare for Russia; Buddhist sculpture of Buryatia and Mongolia.

2.5 km from here · Nikitsky Boulevard 12a · ·

· No. 43

Art · since 1965

Apollinary Vasnetsov Museum

for enthusiasts

Apollinary Vasnetsov’s reconstructions of old Moscow are not painting but scholarship: the artist made archaeological observations, and his views still serve as textbook illustrations. Here they hang in the flat where they were made.

The studio with its original furnishings, and the views of old Moscow — historical reconstructions by which the medieval city is still imagined.

2.6 km from here · Furmanny Lane 6, flats 21–22 (3rd floor) ·

· No. 13

Art · since 1817

The Manege

significant

There is no collection; the value is entirely engineering — a column-free span of nearly 45 metres calculated by Betancourt, a monument of engineering thought with few equals in Europe. Everything else here is temporary.

The building itself: a column-free hall spanned by timber trusses of almost 45 metres, calculated by the engineer Agustín de Betancourt — a rare monument of engineering.

2.6 km from here · Manezhnaya Square 1 ·

· No. 19

Art · since 2016

Museum of Russian Impressionism

outstanding

The term “Russian impressionism” is contested, and this is the only institution that investigates rather than illustrates it. The value is the exhibition programme: works come here from private collections that would otherwise never be seen.

Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov, Igor Grabar, Nikolai Bogdanov-Belsky. The building is a converted cylindrical flour store of the Bolshevik factory — a rare case of industry turned into a museum.

2.8 km from here · Leningradsky Prospekt 15, bldg 11 · ·

· No. 51

Art · since 1934

The Museum of Architecture

outstanding

The only museum of architecture in Russia and one of the few in the world. It holds fragments of demolished buildings — reliefs from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, details of the Sukharev Tower: things that exist nowhere else because the buildings do not.

The enfilade of the Talyzin house with its exhibitions; the Apothecary Office, 17th-century chambers where fragments of demolished Moscow buildings are shown; models of unbuilt projects, including material on the Palace of the Soviets.

2.8 km from here · Vozdvizhenka 5/25 · ·

· No. 53

History · since 1806

The Armoury Chamber

world-class

A treasury formed by keeping rather than by collecting: things entered as the sovereign’s property or as an embassy gift, and so came through where in Europe they went to the crucible. English silver of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries stands here more fully than in England itself — the royal plate at home was melted under the Commonwealth, while what had been sent to Moscow was never touched. Neither the Tower nor the Victoria and Albert can be as complete about that English century as this room in Moscow. There is no painting here at all: this is a chamber of objects.

The Cap of Monomakh and the double throne of the boy tsars Ivan and Peter. Tudor and Stuart silver, a holding with no equal anywhere. Fabergé Easter eggs. Icon covers, panagias and chalices of pre-Mongol Rus. The carriage rooms: coronation coaches of the eighteenth century.

2.8 km from here · The Moscow Kremlin (entrance through the Kutafya Tower) · ·

· No. 59

History · since 1994

The Old English Court

significant

The oldest surviving secular building in Moscow. The value is in the vaults themselves: almost no 16th-century interiors are left in the city, and these were recovered by Baranovsky, the restorer who saved half of it.

The Treasury Chamber with its 16th–17th-century interior and the original vaults; the display on Russian–English trade and finds from the Zaryadye digs.

And we came to the Mosco the 4. day of October, and were lodged that night in a simple house: but the next day we were sent for to the Emperour his secretarie…

George Killingworth, 1589 in full

2.9 km from here · Varvarka 4a (Zaryadye Park) · ·

· No. 18

History · since 1859

The Romanov Chambers

significant

One of the first museums in Russia: it opened in 1859, thirteen years before the Historical Museum, and opened already as a reconstruction of boyar life — an idea unheard of at the time. What is to be looked at is not authenticity down to the nail but the conception itself: how the middle of the nineteenth century pictured the seventeenth, and what came of it. Barry and Pugin were building Westminster in those same decades, and the case is the same — a century imagining an earlier one and building it in earnest. The collection meanwhile is real: furniture, vessels, textiles, tiles. Together with the Old English Court two steps away, this is the best pair in Moscow about the city before Peter.

The sixteenth-century undercroft, the one genuine part of the building. The interiors recreated by Richter in the 1850s: the dining chamber, the boyarynya’s room, the light room. Tiled stoves, chests, vessels and textiles of the seventeenth century.

2.9 km from here · Varvarka Street 10 ·

· No. 77

Architecture and estates · since 1955

The Kremlin Cathedrals

world-class

The iconostasis of the Annunciation Cathedral is linked with the names of Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev and Prokhor of Gorodets: the chronicle for 1405 names them as the painters of this church, though whether the present icons are that same work is still argued. Such a conjunction of names exists nowhere else. And the difference from any museum of icons is one of principle: the things stand where they stood, in the light and the space they were painted for — as the glass at Canterbury is one thing in the window and quite another in a case. What is not here is explanation: the cathedrals carry almost no labels and are meant for someone who already knows, or who came with a guide.

The deesis tier of the Annunciation Cathedral. The frescoes of the Dormition Cathedral, 1642–1644, and its iconostasis; there too the oldest icons, brought to Moscow as the lands were gathered in. The tombs of the Moscow princes and tsars in the Archangel Cathedral, painted 1652–1666. The Patriarch’s Palace: applied art and the household of the seventeenth century.

The Mosco it selfe is great: I take the whole towne to bee greater then London with the suburbes: but it is very rude, and standeth without all order. […] There is a faire Castle, the walles whereof are of bricke, and very high…

Richard Chancellor, 1589 in full

3.0 km from here · The Moscow Kremlin, Cathedral Square (entrance through the Kutafya Tower) · ·

· No. 60