The museum from the point of view of antiquity is the sanctuary of muses, the Museon (museion), but in modern times this concept has lost its original so broad meaning. The place where people were engaged in science, art, literature received a different cultural context: these are monuments from distant times and works of art, samples from which you can study the natural world, all sorts of rarities and wonders gathered in a single exposition for all to see. Museum apartment is not usually created as a collection institution. They preserve personal things, household items, furniture and the spirit of that outstanding person to whom this place of memory is dedicated. In almost every big city, there is far from one such apartment museum.
Capital Cities
In every major cultural and educational center, the most talented people with a bright mind and a bright fate are concentrated. Therefore, such a form as a museum-apartment is especially widely represented in both capitals.
Here you can get an idea of the life of a famous person, see the things that surrounded him, there remains the atmosphere of bygone time and even that spirit or that muse that hovered next to a brilliant person when he worked or rested. This fully applies to such museum forms as a museum-apartment, a house-museum, a museum-estate.
Pushkin, Zoshchenko and others
It should be noted that often the atmosphere of the museum-apartment is not genuine, everything is recreated according to the style of the era, based on various kinds of documents. So the museum-apartment of Pushkin on the Moika embankment was created, although there are many artifacts that belonged to the poet personally. However, he lived in this apartment for a short time and a very long time, it is now almost impossible to restore the decoration of his chambers. But in the same house at another time lived Princess Volkonskaya and Duke Biron.
And here is a small museum. Apartments in St. Petersburg, dedicated to the life and work of Mikhail Zoshchenko, have not been touched by time - they store all the objects and the interior intact and in absolute authenticity, these are completely the very things that surrounded the writer and his family a little less than a hundred years ago. Also in St. Petersburg you can join the culture of the broadest profile: there are preserved dwellings not only of writers: Blok, Nabokov, Gumilyov, Nekrasov, Brodsky and others, but also Chaliapin, Rimsky-Korsakov, academician Pavlov, actors Samoilov and many other outstanding personalities of different kind of activity. In the Northern capital you can find any form of such as a museum-apartment, a house-museum, a museum-estate. In St. Petersburg, only the last more than forty, and all of them are interesting. This city loves its past very much.
Moscow
In Moscow there are about forty memorial apartments awaiting visitors, so many extraordinary personalities lived in our capital. Here, too, there are many all forms of museums dedicated to people who have influenced the history of not only the city and country, but the whole world. Not so much objects are exhibited as the spirit of the time in which certain great deeds took place.
For example, the museum-apartment on the Arbat is dedicated to M. Yu. Lermontov. On Tverskaya you can visit the memorial museum-workshop of the great sculptor S. T. Konyonkov. F. M. Dostoevsky has a very atmospheric museum-apartment on his name street, and the house-museum of the excellent playwright A. N. Ostrovsky is located on Ordynka.
In the center of Moscow
You can take a walk in Khamovniki, on the street of Leo Tolstoy. There is a wonderful museum-estate of this writer. But the street of Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy was renamed Spiridonovka, but the writer's dwelling is perfectly preserved and invites everyone. People walking in the center of the capital almost on every house can read: museum-apartment, house-museum, museum-estate. Nevertheless, there are a lot of similar interesting sights on the outskirts.
On weekends, usually many visitors receive apartment museums in Moscow. In some, you can even drink coffee, as, for example, on Bolshaya Sadovaya, at M. A. Bulgakov. Very often a museum-apartment, a house-museum, a museum-estate — almost all names can be substituted — are used as concert venues. Magnificent chamber musicians, for example, are greeted in the memorial museum of M. N. Ermolova on Tversky Boulevard.
Korolev, Stanislavsky, Herzen and other great people
Museum-apartments in Moscow are too numerous to tell about everyone, although I really want to. Not far from the South entrance of VDNH there is a beautiful house-museum, where the atmosphere itself is permeated by space, which academician S.P. Korolev presented to humanity. And in the very center of the city, in Leontyevsky Lane, is the home of K. S. Stanislavsky, where concerts and performances for the public are commonplace.
In A.I. Herzen’s dwelling near Smolenskaya Square, visitors may not be prompted, “What should I do?”, But they will certainly be told “Who is to blame?”, Since every subject breathes the name of the author of this immortal essay. The apartment museum, the names of absolutely anyone, always leads the visitor not only to new knowledge, but also to the discovery of certain reserved corners of the soul.
On Novinsky Boulevard you can visit the building where F.I. Chaliapin lived, on the square of I.V. Kurchatov - the surviving home of the outstanding atomic physicist, academician P.L. Kapitsa. M.V. Keldysh and V.N. Vinogradov are also among those many people whom I always want to know more about; these memorable places are never empty. Therefore, such institutions as a museum-apartment, a house-museum, a museum-estate are being created, the names of which say themselves that the people are interested in heroes who have come out of its ranks.
Homesteads
Moscow and Moscow region are famous for the fact that there is no problem of a pleasant and useful weekend, except the problem of choice. If the soul wants not only architectural beauties and a creative atmosphere, but also proximity to nature, there is always the opportunity to visit the museum-estate, of which there are many.
What is a museum-estate? According to V.I. Dahl, a manor (otherwise a shade) is a master’s house in the countryside, with a garden, a vegetable garden and all the outlets. And the museum suggests that the former owners of the estate have many talents or extraordinary destinies.
Dubrovitsy
At the top of the hill in Dubrovitsy is a baroque temple, which is absolutely uncharacteristic for Russian architecture. This is a must-see item. Here first, at least in the photo. The Church of the Sign of the Blessed Virgin Mary is amazingly beautiful. It is not in vain that Prince Golitsyn entrusted his construction not only to Polish, Swedish, German and Dutch masters, but also to the illustrious Domenico Trezzini (his previous work was the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg). At other times, the Potemkins owned this estate.
At the beginning, the Manor Palace was also conceived and even built in the Baroque style, but in the nineteenth century it was rebuilt in the classical: three-story, with terraces, covered galleries and balconies. Nearby are four outbuildings for servants and clergy. The interior of the house is magnificent, especially the Armorial Hall. Foreign ambassadors and even the Romanovs themselves were frequent guests here. A visitor experiences a very interesting feeling when he imagines that the Russian sovereigns once passed along the same floor through the same corridor. Many films have been shot here, for example, Monte Cristo.
Serednikovo
This estate was created at the most favorable time, one might say, in the golden age of Russian construction of the manor houses. It was owned by Stolypin, and since the grandmother of M. Yu. Lermontov was from this family, the estate is associated with the name of the poet, although here, for example, the outstanding reformer P. A. Stolypin spent all his childhood and youth. Subsequently, celebrities such as Rachmaninov and Chaliapin spent a lot of time here.
The architectural style is very light and romantic, the historic interiors are preserved in the front door. The park is very good for landscape painters, because even having never held a brush in their hands here from the magnificence of the views, I really want to master this art. There is a film town with scenery of England three centuries ago. Films "The Servant of the Sovereigns", "Admiral", "Lermontov", "Poor Nastya" and many others were shot here.
Arkhangelsk
This manor was known even during the time of Ivan the Terrible, however, the ensemble and the architectural and park are now presented in the classicism of the eighteenth century. The Yusupovs, Odoevskys, Golitsins lived in Arkhangelsk for the last three hundred years.
The estate reminds with its luxury French castles or Roman villas: lawns, terraces, well-groomed alleys with many marble statues. Stairs and balustrades going down to the river, an excellent vast park with huge larches - there is a place to walk and relax the Muscovite after hard work. The park is considered the best in Russia. Here, since the time of Prince Nikolai Yusupov, there is a museum in which more than four hundred paintings of only Western European painting are a very significant collection.
Kuskovo
Muscovites consider the museum-estate Kuskovo a park like Sokolniki, where you can have fun and cultural rest, at the same time and see a beautiful estate on the shore. However, this opinion is incorrect. The Kuskovo Forest Park is on its own, and the Kuskovo Estate is a museum where you can ride in a carriage, see the palace itself, Italian and Dutch houses and a grotto - that is, its exhibits. There is also a ceramics museum with an abundance of magnificent objects located in greenhouses - American and Big Stone.