Architectural, Cultural sights in Russia
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Kolomenskoe Museum-Reserve
Set amid 4 sq km of parkland, on a bluff above a bend in the Moscow River, this Museum-Reserve is an ancient royal country seat and Unesco World Heritage Site. Many festivals are held here, so check if anything is happening during your visit. From Bolshaya ul, enter at the rear of the grounds through the 17th-century Saviour Gate to the whitewashed Our Lady of Kazan Church, both built in the time of Tsar Alexey. The church faces the site of his great wooden palace, which was demolished in 1768 by Catherine the Great. Ahead, the white, tent-roofed 17th-century front gate and clock tower mark the edge of the old inner-palace precinct. The golden double-headed eagle that top…
reviewed
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Mendeleev Museum
In the twelve Colleges, the building where Dmitry Mendeleev invented the periodic table of elements now contains the Mendeleev Museum. His cosy study has been lovingly preserved and you can see his desk (where he always stood rather than sat) and some early drafts of the periodic table.
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Kremlin
Rostov’s main attraction is its unashamedly photogenic kremlin. Though founded in the 12th century, nearly all the buildings here date to the 1670s and 1680s. With its five magnificent domes, the Assumption Cathedral dominates the kremlin, although it is just outside the latter’s north wall. Outside service hours, you can get inside the cathedral through the door in the church shop on ul Karla Marksa. The cathedral was here a century before the kremlin, while the belfry was added in the 1680s. Each of 15 bells in the belfry has its own name; the largest, weighing 32 tonnes, is called Sysoy, named for the Rostov Metropolitan who oversaw the construction of the kremlin…
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Melnikov House
On a side street near the Arbat, the home of Konstantin Melnikov still stands as testament to the innovation of the Russian avant-garde in the 1920s. This plot of land was granted to the architect on the grounds that the house was a social experiment that would then be applied to mass housing. (It never was.) He created his unusual new home – the only private house built during the Soviet period – from two interlocking cylinders. It is an ingenious design that employs no internal load-bearing wall and has a self-reinforcing wooden grid floor. The house was also experimental in its designation of living space: the whole family slept in one room, painted a golden yellow and…
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Narkomfin
The model for Le Corbusier’s Unitè D’Habitation, this architectural landmark is set slightly back from the Garden Ring, wedged between the US embassy and Novinsky Passage shopping centre. On the World Monuments Fund Watch List since 2002, this building is an early experiment in semicommunal living, and a prototype for contemporary apartment blocks. Designed and built between 1928 and 1930 by Moisei Ginzburg and Ignatii Milinis Narkomfin, the building offered housing for members of the Commissariat of Finances. There was room for 52 families in duplex apartments and a penthouse on the roof for the Commissar of Finances. In following with constructivist ideals, communal spa…
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Peter’s Cabin
In a patch of trees east of the fortress is a little stone building known as Peter’s Cabin, St Petersburg’s oldest surviving structure. This log cabin was supposedly built in three days in May 1703 for Peter to live in while he supervised the construction of the fortress and city. During Catherine the Great’s time, the house was protected by a bricklayer. The cabin has always been a sentimental site for St Petersburg. During WWII, Soviet soldiers would take an oath of allegiance to the city here, vowing to protect it from the Germans, before disappearing to the front. After the Siege of Leningrad, this was the first museum to reopen to the public. The little cabin feels m…
reviewed
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Hall Of Facets
Named for its Italian Renaissance stone facing, the Hall of Facets was designed and built by Marco Ruffo and Pietro Solario between 1487 and 1491 during the reign of Ivan III. Its upper floor housed the tsar's throne room, scene of banquets and ceremonies.
Access to the Hall of Facets was via an outside staircase from the square below. During the Streltsky Rebellion of 1682, several of Peter the Great's relatives were tossed down the exterior Red Staircase, so called because it ran red with their blood. (It's no wonder that Peter hated Moscow and decided to start afresh with a new capital in St Petersburg.) Stalin destroyed the staircase, but it was rebuilt in 1994.
The na…
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Moscow State University (MGU)
The best view over Moscow is from Universitetskaya pl, at the top of the hill. From here, most of the city spreads out before you. It is also an excellent vantage point to see Luzhniki, the huge stadium complex built across the river for the 1980 Olympics, as well as Novodevichy Convent and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Behind Universitetskaya pl is the Stalinist spire of Moscow State University, one of the ‘Seven Sisters’. The building is the result of four years of hard labour by convicts between 1949 and 1953. It boasts an amazing 36 stories and 33km of corridors. The shining star that sits atop the spire is supposed to weigh 12 tonnes. Among other socialist rea…
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Raskolnikov House
This innocuous house on the corner of Stolyarny per (called ‘S… lane’ in the book) is one of two possible locations of the attic apartment of Rodyon Raskolnikov, protagonist of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Those who claim this is the place go further, saying that Rodyon retrieved the murder weapon from a street-sweeper’s storage bin inside the tunnel leading to the courtyard. The house is marked by a sculpture of Dostoevsky. The inscription says something to the effect of ‘The tragic fate of the people of this area of St Petersburg formed the foundation of Dostoevsky’s passionate sermon of goodness for all mankind’. Other Dostoevsky connoisseurs argue that R…
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Sampsonievsky Cathedral
This fascinating pea-green baroque cathedral dates from 1740 and is a beautiful highlight of a remarkably dull industrial area of the Vyborg Side – it’s well worth the trip out here. It is believed to be the church where Catherine the Great married her one-eyed lover Grigory Potemkin in a secret ceremony in 1774. Today it’s a delightful place, having been repainted and restored to its original glory on the outside. Restoration on the inside continues and it looks marvellous. The cathedral’s most interesting feature is the calendar of saints, two enormous panels on either side of the nave, each representing six months of the year and every day decorated with a mini-icon of…
reviewed
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Volkonsky House-Museum
A short walk behind the pretty pink Preobrazheniya Gospodnya Church then through big heavy gates is the Volkonsky House-Museum. It’s the preserved home of Decembrist Count Sergei Volkonsky, whose wife Maria Volkonskaya cuts the main figure in Christine Sutherland’s book The Princess of Siberia. The mansion is set in a courtyard with stables, barn and servant quarters (beware of the dog). Downstairs is an (over-) renovated piano room; upstairs is a photo exhibition including portraits of Maria and other 1820s women who romantically followed their husbands and lovers into exile. Labels are only in Russian but a R70 English-language pamphlet tells the stories.
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Sergei Kirov Museum
The Sergei Kirov Museum is in the 4th- and 5th-floor apartment where one of Stalin’s henchmen spent his last days. Kirov’s murder started a wave of deadly repression throughout Russia. Don’t miss the Party leader’s death clothes, hung out for reverence: you can see the tiny, bloodstained hole in the back of his cap where he was shot, and the torn seam on his jacket’s left breast where doctors tried to revive his heart. The comfy apartment shows how the Bolshevik elite really lived and there’s also a charming section on the daily lives of St Petersburg’s children from 1917 to 1940.
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Romanov Death Site
On the night of 16 July 1918, Tsar Nicholas II, his wife and children were murdered in the basement of a local merchant's house, known as Dom Ipatyeva (named for its owner, Nikolay Ipatyev). During the Soviet period, the building housed a local museum of atheism, but it was demolished in 1977 by then-governor Boris Yeltsin, who feared it would attract monarchist sympathisers.
Today, the site is marked by an iron cross dating from 1991, and a second marble cross from 1998 when the Romanovs' remains were sent to St Petersburg for burial in the family vault.
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Dostoevsky Houses
Dostoevsky lived in three flats on this tiny street alone. From 1861 to 1863, he lived at No 1. In 1864, he spent one month living in the faded red building at No 9, before moving to No 7. Here, he lived from 1864 to 1867 and wrote Crime and Punishment; indeed, the route taken by the novel’s antihero Raskolnikov to murder the old woman moneylender passed directly under his window. While this area has changed enormously, it’s still possible to catch glimpses of the grim reality of slum life that pervaded this place in the mid-19th century.
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Mayakovsky Museum
The startling postmodern entrance on this prerevolutionary mansion is appropriate for a museum dedicated to the revolutionary, futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The building is actually where Mayakovsky lived in a communal apartment during the last years of his life. The room where he worked – and shot himself in 1930 – has been preserved. Run by the poet’s granddaughter, the museum contains an eclectic collection of his manuscripts and sketches, as well as the requisite personal items and family photographs.
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Hermitage
On the west side of the Lower Park, near the shore, the Hermitage is a two-storey pink-and-white box featuring the ultimate in private dining: special elevators hoist a fully laid table into the imperial presence on the 2nd floor, thereby eliminating any hindrance by servants. The elevators are circular and directly in front of each diner, whose plate would be lowered, replenished and replaced.
The entry ticket here also includes admission to the modest Marly Palace, further to the west, inspired by a French hunting lodge.
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House of Friendship With Peoples of Foreign Countries
The ‘Moorish Castle’ studded with seashells was built in 1899 for an eccentric merchant, Arseny Morozov, who was inspired by a real one in Spain. The inside is sumptuous and equally over the top. Morozov’s mother, who lived next door, apparently declared of her son’s home, ‘Until now, only I knew you were mad; now everyone will’. This place is not normally open to the public, but sometimes exhibitions are held here; alternatively, Dom Patriarshy Tours (http://russiatravel-pdtours.netfirms.com/) occasionally brings groups here.
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Romanov Chambers in Zaryadie
This small but interesting museum is devoted to the lives of the Romanov family, who were mere boyars (nobles) before they became tsars. The house was built by Nikita Romanov, whose grandson Mikhail later became the first tsar of the 300-year Romanov dynasty. Exhibits (with descriptions in English) show the house as it might have been when the Romanovs lived here in the 16th century. Some of the artistic detail, such as the woodwork in the women’s quarters, is amazing. Enter from the rear of the building.
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Chesma Hall
A highlight of the Grand Palace, the Chesma Hall is full of huge paintings of Russia's destruction of the Turkish fleet at Çesme in 1770. Of some 20 rooms, the last, without a trace of Catherine, is the finest - Peter's simple, beautiful study, was apparently the only room to survive the Germans. The study has 14 fantastic carved-wood panels, of which six reconstructions (in lighter wood) are no less impressive; each took 1½ years to do. Peter the Great still looks like the tsar with the best taste.
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Gorky House-Museum
This fascinating 1906 Art Nouveau mansion was designed by Fyodor Shekhtel and gifted to celebrated author Maxim Gorky in 1931. The house is a visual fantasy with sculpted doorways, ceiling murals, stained glass, a carved stone staircase and exterior tile work. Besides the fantastic decor it contains many of Gorky’s personal items, including his extensive library. A small room in the cupola houses random, rotating exhibits of contemporary or quixotic artwork.
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Monplaisir
Peter’s outwardly more humble, sea-facing villa Monplaisir remained his favourite. It’s easy to see why: it’s wood-panelled, snug and elegant, peaceful even when there’s a crowd – which there used to be all the time, what with Peter’s mandatory partying (‘misbehaving’ guests were required to gulp down huge quantities of wine).
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Old English Court
This reconstructed 16th-century house, white with peaked wooden roofs, was the residence of England’s first emissaries to Russia (sent by Elizabeth I to Ivan the Terrible). It also served as the base for English merchants, who were allowed to trade duty free in exchange for providing military supplies to Ivan. Today, it houses a small exhibit dedicated to this early international exchange.
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Goncharov Museum
The Goncharov Museumis in the two-storey house where the writer Ivan Goncharov grew up. His most famous work is Oblomov; less well known is his travelogue Frigate Pallada describing Goncharov’s journey on a sailing ship from St Petersburg to Japan around Cape Horn with the first Russian diplomatic mission to the country, which was just beginning to open.
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Pushkin House
The old customs house, topped with statues and a dome, is now home to the Institute of Russian Literature. Fondly called Pushkin House, the handsome building contains a small literary museum with dusty exhibits on Tolstoy, Gogol, Lermontov and Turgenev, as well as a room dedicated to the writers of the Silver Age. Call in advance for an English-language tour.
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18th-century hotel
Clockwise around the northern side of picturesque Susaninskaya pl are: a 19th-century fire tower (still in use and under Unesco protection); a former military guardhouse, housing a small literature museum; an 18th-century hotel for members of the royal family; the palace of an 1812 war hero, now a courthouse; and the town hall.
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