Free museums in Moscow
Admission here costs nothing: to some of these museums always, to others on certain days of the month. We mark both, and we say which day it is. The list is short for now and will grow: many municipal museums have a free day, but we enter it only where we have checked it ourselves.
The Museum of the Russian Icon
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.
The Manege
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.
The Archives Exhibition Hall
Originals that normally stay in the stacks and are never seen: decrees with the signatures still on them, drawings, letters, photographs. They come here from the Archive of Ancient Acts, the Military History Archive and other state repositories, into which one cannot simply walk.
The Water Museum
Working models of waterworks, from the Rostokino aqueduct to the present treatment plants; the history of the Moscow sewer in drawings and photographs.