Museums near The Mineralogical Museum

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.

3.2 km from here · Bakhrushina Street 31/12

· No. 66

Art · since 2024

The Tretyakov on Kadashevskaya

significant

Not yet a collection but an instrument: the first exhibition building in Moscow built to 21st-century museum standards — climate, light, spans. Its value is that things can now be brought here that could not be brought before.

There is no permanent collection — this is an exhibition wing. See the atrium, open without a ticket, and the façades: they carry reproductions of 34 works by Russian artists.

3.2 km from here · Kadashevskaya Embankment 12 · ·

· No. 55

Art · since 1912

The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

world-class

The Louvre and the Metropolitan hold more originals; what is unique is Tsvetaev’s cast collection — the only large teaching museum of the history of art in the world still intact and still working as intended. In Europe such collections went into storage in the 20th century. Add the Fayum portraits and objects from Schliemann’s Trojan hoards.

The teaching collection of plaster casts after antique and Renaissance sculpture — Tsvetaev’s idea, unmatched for completeness; the Fayum portraits; objects from Priam’s Treasure found by Schliemann at Troy; the Egyptian collection. The French 19th–20th century is in the Gallery at Volkhonka 14, on a separate ticket.

3.3 km from here · Volkhonka 12 · ·

· No. 20

House museums · since 1922

The Scriabin Museum

significant

A flat from which nothing was carried out: Scriabin rented it for his last three years and died here in 1915, and it became a museum in 1922 — almost without a gap. Furniture, books, piano and the fittings of the study are the very ones. But the chief thing is another: Scriabin conceived music together with light, and the trace of that conception survives in the flat — the colour score of Prometheus and the light apparatus. No other composer’s museum in Russia shows the idea and not merely the domestic life.

The Bechstein grand at which the last works were written. The study and the library with the owner’s markings. The colour score of Prometheus and the colour-light apparatus assembled to his design. A concert hall in the same house.

3.6 km from here · Bolshoy Nikolopeskovsky Lane 11

· No. 76

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.

3.7 km from here · Vavilova 57 · ·

· No. 57

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

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

· No. 60

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.

3.9 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.

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

· No. 59

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.

4.1 km from here · Manezhnaya Square 1 ·

· No. 19

Science and nature · since 1993

The Water Museum

for enthusiasts

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.

4.1 km from here · Sarinsky Proyezd 13 · ·

· No. 39