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Moscow museums

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.

Art · since 2006

Mikhail Abramov Museum of the Russian Icon

outstanding
Mikhail Abramov Museum of the Russian Icon
Museum of the Russian icon, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
For Ethiopian Christian art it is the only collection in Russia; for the Russian icon it competes with state museums. Add a circumstance almost unheard of anywhere in the world for a collection of this level: admission is free.

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.

Goncharnaya 3, bldg 1 · ·
oldest here: opening hours, 15 August 2026 · No. 54
Art · since 1817

The Manege Central Exhibition Hall

significant
The Manege Central Exhibition Hall
Bernt Rostad uploaded and derivative work: MrPanyGoff, CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
There is no collection; the value is entirely engineering — a column-free span of nearly 45 metres calculated by Betancourt, a monument of engineering thought with few equals in Europe. Everything else here is temporary.

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.

Manezhnaya Square 1 ·
oldest here: opening hours, 15 August 2026 · No. 19
History · since 2000

Exhibition Hall of the Federal Archives

for enthusiasts
Exhibition Hall of the Federal Archives
Originals from the state archives — the very sheets that normally lie in a storeroom and are never seen: decrees, letters, drawings, photographs. Here they are taken out and shown.

Original documents from the State Archive of the Russian Federation, RGADA, RGVIA and other federal archives: things that normally stay in the stacks.

Bolshaya Pirogovskaya 17 · ·
oldest here: opening hours, 15 August 2026 · No. 36
Science and nature · since 1993

The Water Museum

for enthusiasts
The Water Museum
Architect: Max Hoeppener. Photo: NVO, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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.

Sarinsky Proyezd 13 · ·
oldest here: opening hours, 15 August 2026 · No. 39
Ready-made selections
The main museums of Moscow
Where to go for painting in Moscow
Moscow museums worth going to with a child
Museums in Moscow with step-free access
The literary museums of Moscow

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