Museums near The Museum of the Russian Icon

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.

1.3 km from here · Varvarka Street 10 ·

· No. 77

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

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

· No. 18

Art · since 1947

The Rublev Museum

outstanding

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.

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.

1.6 km from here · Andronyevskaya Square 10 · ·

· No. 61

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.

1.7 km from here · Bakhrushina Street 31/12

· No. 66

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.

1.7 km from here · Lavrushinsky Lane 10 · ·

· No. 1

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.

1.7 km from here · Kadashevskaya Embankment 12 · ·

· No. 55

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

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

· No. 60

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.

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

· No. 59

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.

2.0 km from here · Sarinsky Proyezd 13 · ·

· No. 39

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.

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

· No. 13