The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts?Why this museumThe 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.
Getting there — partly. Kropotkinskaya has no lift. The nearest drop-off is on Volkhonka. Moscow metro stations almost never have lifts to the platform, except on the Big Circle line and the MCC. A wheelchair user is better served by the surface buses, which are low-floor across the centre.3 hours
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The second largest collection of foreign art in Russia. Conceived by Ivan Tsvetaev as a teaching Museum of Fine Arts for Moscow University and opened on 31 May 1912.
The building. A building in the form of an antique temple on a high podium, by Roman Klein, 1898–1912.
Good to know. The museum is building a “museum town”; part of the buildings on Volkhonka are closed for works.
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.
The Italian Court and the casts — the reason the museum was built. Then the Fayum portraits, the Egyptian hall and Priam’s Treasure.
| Mon | closed |
| Tue, Wed, Sun | 10:00–20:00 |
| Thu, Sat | 10:00–21:00 |
| Fri | 11:00–21:00 |
Over seven hundred objects: sculpture and painting of Russian Buddhism, almost none of it shown before. More than a hundred sculptures were conserved for the opening.