Museums near Kolomenskoye

Transport · since 1959

The Lomakov Museum

for enthusiasts

The first private car collection in the country, begun in 1959 when there was almost nothing to collect and no reason to. The value is historical: a monument to private collecting under Soviet rule.

A Mercedes-Benz 540K the museum links to Joseph Goebbels; government ZIS limousines; vehicles from the collection have appeared in more than 120 films.

6.6 km from here · Krasnodarskaya, plot 58 · ·

· No. 12

Science and nature · since 1993

A departmental museum with working models of city infrastructure — an almost extinct genre. Worth seeing for anyone curious about how the city works underground; there is nowhere else in Moscow for that.

Working models of waterworks, from the Rostokino aqueduct to the present treatment plants; the history of the Moscow sewer in drawings and photographs.

6.9 km from here · Sarinsky Proyezd 13 · ·

· No. 39

Science and nature · since 1907

The Darwin Museum

significant

The oldest museum of evolution in Russia, built around an idea rather than around a case of stuffed animals: Kots collected proofs of variability, and the display serves the proof. It cannot match Vienna or Berlin for material, but its way of arguing stands on its own.

Early 20th-century taxidermy by Filipp Fedulov, among the finest anywhere; the collection of albinos and melanists gathered by Kots as visible proof of variability; the Living Planet hall.

7.1 km from here · Vavilova 57 · ·

· No. 57

Science and nature · since 1716

The Mineralogical Museum

outstanding

A collection more than three hundred years old: it grew out of the mineral cabinet of Peter’s Kunstkamera and moved to Moscow with the Academy of Sciences. Some hundred and forty thousand specimens make it one of the largest mineralogical museums in the world, and for the systematics of stone it has no equal in Russia. The Vault at South Kensington shows a few dozen chosen stones magnificently; the point here is the opposite — the whole class, in order, with the ordinary specimen beside the extraordinary one, which is what a systematic collection is for. Come knowing that this is a scientific museum and not an entertaining one: cases, labels, no screens. Anyone who wants the telling needs a guided tour, and it must be booked ahead.

The systematic collection — the whole known mineral world by class. Ural malachite and rhodonite from the old crown holdings. Meteorites. Hardstone work by Fabergé and the Peterhof lapidary works. Large specimens of a size only museums of this age possess.

7.2 km from here · Leninsky Prospekt 18, building 2 · ·

· No. 63

History · since 1991

The Museum of Patrons

for enthusiasts

The only museum about where the Tretyakov Gallery, the Bakhrushin, the Shchukin and Morozov collections came from: about the people who paid for them. The subject runs through our whole list and is gathered nowhere else. What the Courtauld is to Britain — a private eye and a private purse turned into a public institution — the Moscow merchants were to Russia, several times over and within one generation. The rating is honest and not high: this is a private educational centre in an old merchant house, the holding is documentary and small, and there is no free entry at all, only by appointment. Come here after the great museums, having asked yourself whose money they stand on.

Documents, portraits and belongings of the Moscow merchantry of the nineteenth century. Material on the Tretyakov, Morozov, Bakhrushin and Shchukin dynasties. The house of Ivan Prostyakov, in which the museum lives.

7.3 km from here · Donskaya Street 9 · ·

· No. 79

Unusual · since 1894

The Bakhrushin Museum

outstanding

A collection begun in 1894 by one private man and grown into the largest theatre collection in the world — so the museum reckons it, and it is hard to dispute: a million and a half items. Its value is completeness: Russian theatre can be followed here in sequence, from the serf stage to the present, rather than by isolated stars. The V&A holds the national theatre archive of Britain and shows it magnificently; the difference is that there the Russian line is a guest and here it is the whole subject. The designs by Golovin, Bakst, Korovin and Exter are, incidentally, first-rate painting — they merely happen to be filed under theatre. The main building reopened after a long restoration in 2024, and the make-up of the permanent display is worth checking before setting out.

Designs for sets and costumes by Golovin, Bakst, Korovin, Exter and Tatlin. Costumes and possessions of the great actors. Stage models. The archives of theatres and directors. Bakhrushin’s own house, built for the collection.

7.3 km from here · Bakhrushina Street 31/12

· No. 66

Art · since 1969

The Tropinin Museum

significant

The Moscow portrait of the first half of the 19th century is nowhere else so densely gathered. The value is also in the origin: Vishnevsky’s private collection given to the city, a model of how Russian museums came to be.

Portraits by Vasily Tropinin and his Moscow contemporaries, work by serf artists, Russian Biedermeier. The quiet Zamoskvorechye lane and the house itself are half the pleasure.

7.8 km from here · Shchetininsky Lane 10, bldg 1 · ·

· No. 31

Art · since 1986

The New Tretyakov

world-class

The Russian avant-garde is the one Russian artistic system to enter the world canon on equal terms, and its largest collection is here. MoMA and the Pompidou show Malevich and Tatlin torn from their setting; here they hang beside what they rebelled against, which changes the reading.

Malevich’s Black Square, Petrov-Vodkin’s Bathing of a Red Horse, work by Kandinsky, Chagall, Goncharova and Larionov, the model of Tatlin’s Tower. Next door: the Muzeon park of dismantled Soviet monuments.

8.4 km from here · Krymsky Val 10 · ·

· No. 5

Art · since 1856

The Tretyakov Gallery

world-class

Russian art of the 11th to early 20th century is nowhere else assembled so fully — only the Russian Museum compares. But the canon was formed here: Tretyakov bought from living artists what he himself thought mattered, and one man’s private judgement became what we now call the Russian school. Seeing the 19th century elsewhere means seeing fragments.

Ivanov’s The Appearance of Christ Before the People in its own hall; Surikov’s Boyarynya Morozova and Morning of the Streltsy Execution; Repin’s Ivan the Terrible and His Son; Serov’s Girl with Peaches; Vasnetsov’s Bogatyrs; the icon halls. Rublev’s Trinity is no longer here: it was handed to the Church in 2023.

8.7 km from here · Lavrushinsky Lane 10 · ·

· No. 1

Art · since 2006

The Museum of the Russian Icon

outstanding

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.

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.

8.8 km from here · Goncharnaya 3, bldg 1 · ·

· No. 54