Bulgakov State Museum in Moscow World, Russia, Cities, Moscow, Sightseeing . M. A. Bulgakov State Museum in Moscow

The Bulgakov Museum in Moscow is Russia’s first cultural and educational museum complex dedicated to the biography and work of the famous writer. It was opened in 2007 in a house on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, where Bulgakov lived in the early 1920s, in a “bad”, according to the plot of the novel “The Master and Margarita”, apartment. In addition to permanent exhibitions, temporary exhibitions devoted to certain aspects of the writer’s life and his works are organized on a small area, as well as chamber music concerts. The museum staff organizes excursions around Bulgakov’s Moscow, publishes collections of literary and historical works based on the materials of scientific conferences, shows theatrical performances in the rooms of the “bad apartment.”

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Architectural features of the house on Bolshaya Sadovaya

The house, which houses the Bulgakov Museum in Moscow, was erected in 1904. The author of the project was the architect Edmund Yuditsky, who built about a dozen profitable houses and several urban estates in the capital in the Art Nouveau style. His colleague Antonin Milkov, also an adherent of Art Nouveau, worked on the facade and decoration. The main facade of the building was a five-story rectangle, behind which stood a U-shaped four-story house. It was accessed through a well yard with stunted vegetation. After numerous renovations, almost nothing remains of the modernist interior and facade decoration; some details like the round windows in the corridor can be seen in Bulgakov’s apartment.

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History of Bulgakov’s house

An interactive model in one of the rooms of the Bulgakov Museum in Moscow tells the story of the house, which was commissioned by Ilya Pigit, a Karaim merchant who made a brilliant career from a simple worker in a tobacco factory to its director. Since 1891, having gained experience, he opened his own enterprise, specializing in “popular”, inexpensive varieties of papiros. By the end of the owner’s life, the factory employed about 800 people. Pigit occupied a luxurious ten-room apartment number 5 and wished that his neighbors were honorable members of society – an opera singer, a doctor, a major railway official. Workshops in the four-story building were also rented by artists, including Nikolai Ryabushinsky and the Konchalovsky family.

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The childless owner of the house died in 1915, the inheritance went to his nephews, left-wing SRs who supported the revolution. This did not help them avoid further repression, nor did it save the house from being compacted. The sedate bourgeois were replaced by noisy workers from the printing and tobacco factories, sales clerks, and janitors. In the communal kitchens life was booming – all this was witnessed by Mikhail Bulgakov, who moved to Bolshaya Sadovaya Street in 1921 together with his first wife. At first he occupied apartment No. 50, then moved to the 34th, with more intelligent neighbors. In 1924, the writer left the house altogether, taking with him sketches and memories of life in the communal room, which would later appear on the pages of his plays, stories and the novel “The Master and Margarita.”

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The house after Bulgakov’s departure

In the years before the war, the social composition of the tenants of the future Bulgakov Museum in Moscow was mixed, in the house there were many intellectuals. Continued to work and artists. Pyotr Konchalovsky created his best works here, and after the painter’s death in 1956, his son Mikhail took over the studio. He worked there until his old age, when in 1996 he handed over the premises to a couple of artists – Mikhail Tikhonov and Elena Utenkova, who maintain it to this day. An amateur painter was also Konchalovsky’s neighbor von Bohl, an official of the Imperial Theaters, known mainly for scandals involving Chaliapin. Then his studio was inherited by the sculptor Mitrofan Rukavishnikov, the founder of the famous dynasty. The studio was inherited by his sons until it ended up in the possession of great-grandson Philip, also a famous sculptor.

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In the 60’s communal housing finally began to be resettled, and in the 80’s the empty front part was occupied by free artists, musicians, who did not pay attention to the dilapidated walls and lack of comfort. It was a real underground of the end of the Soviet era, contrary to gossip, not abusing alcohol, but trying to preserve the legendary building. In 1996 they moved out, and all the historical interiors were destroyed by the new owners, who turned this part of the building into a commercial one. Nowadays, there are almost no residential apartments left in the U-shaped part of the Pigitt House either.

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Organization of the Bulgakov Foundation and Museum

In 1990, the Bulgakov Foundation was founded under the leadership of Marietta Chudakova, a major Russian literary scholar. The struggle to preserve Bulgakov’s apartment ended with its transfer to the foundation on the condition that visitors retain access to it. Concerts, conferences, temporary exhibitions were held in the apartment, and by 2007 a solid collection of things related to the writer’s name had been gathered, enough to open a Bulgakov museum.

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Exposition of the museum

The Bulgakov Museum in Moscow consists of several rooms that originally belonged to the dormitory of the Higher Women’s Courses and later turned into a communal apartment. Bulgakov’s own belongings on Bolshaya Sadovaya Sadovaya since 1924, of course, have not survived, the original exhibits were transferred here by the heirs and friends of the writer’s widow. The closet contains a closet from the late 19th century, brought from apartment No. 19, a bourgeois trunk, abandoned in a communal apartment in Sretensk, a traveling valise and a coat rack that belonged to Mikhail Afanasyevich, which was placed under the ceiling for good reason.

The Blue Study recreates the interior of Bulgakov’s last place of residence in Nashchokinsky Lane. In the closet Elena Bulgakova, who became the prototype of Margarita, kept her dresses. The master himself worked behind the secretary, besides, the family legend says that this piece of furniture, made in the second quarter of the XIX century, once belonged to Gogol. The piano was played by the writer’s second wife, the “Nun” cabinet-bureau, which served as a secretaire, chest of drawers and closet, also stood in the living room in Nashchokinsky Lane. Bulgakov’s room faithfully reproduced the creative disorder that reigned in the writer’s study, but really belonged to him only a shelf with mermaids and a few books, and the fundamentally preserved frames and latches of the window overlooking the courtyard remember the 20-ies. The owner of the table was the writer’s uncle, the prototype of Professor Preobrazhensky in “Dog’s Heart.”

The kitchen with shabby furniture and shabby dishes exactly corresponds to the atmosphere of communal hell. The room is decorated with a photograph of Anna Goryacheva, portrayed by Bulgakov as Annushka-Chuma. It was presented to the museum by the great-grandson of Bulgakov’s neighbor, a brilliant lawyer from Switzerland. Here you can also see an antique primus, similar to the one that was repaired by Behemoth. The living room of the Bulgakov Museum recalls the original purpose of the apartment where the students lived. Here the girls gathered to relax, listen to music, and read books. In the room where concerts are held, pre-revolutionary furniture is collected, a piano from the late 19th century is placed.

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Stylistically different from the other rooms of the apartment is the White Room with laconic white tiles on the walls. Here are exhibited items from the series “Words and Things”, telling about the first editions of Bulgakov’s works, forgotten plays and stories, unexpected biographical parallels. A simple corridor contains quotations from the works of Bulgakov’s contemporaries and researchers, a round table and an umbrella stand from an apartment in Nashchokinsky Lane. Another room is not connected with the history of the Pigit house, but is directly related to the writer’s fate. It reproduces the furnishings of the editorial office of the newspaper “Gudok”, in which, in addition to Bulgakov, worked Mayakovsky, Paustovsky, Ilf and Petrov, Olesha, Kataev.

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Tours of the museum and the surrounding area

The permanent exposition of the museum is supplemented by temporary exhibitions, one way or another connected with Bulgakov’s name. These are illustrations to the master’s works, his memories of living in other parts of Moscow, stories about the cinematic fate of the heroes of his books, about colleagues whose creative handwriting is close to Bulgakov. “The Master and Margarita” is not limited: many exhibitions are devoted to stories, plays, “The White Guard.”

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Actions in the museum

The Bulgakov Museum in Moscow organizes joint events with other cultural institutions. For example, the Bulgakov Bestiary during the Night of Arts – is the fruit of the efforts of the museum and the Moscow Zoo. Part of the exposition devoted to the images of anthropomorphic animals in Bulgakov’s works, such as the cat Behemoth or Sharikov, was moved to Klyuev’s house on the territory of the zoo. Then visitors will walk to Bolshaya Sadovaya Sadovaya and take a tour of the museum. Guests are warned that due to the lack of space for such events, pre-registration is required. Theatricalized night tours deserve a special mention. The script of “Surprises of the fifth dimension” is written anew each time and becomes a surprise even for the guide, the excursion “50 – an apartment with a strange reputation” is more predictable – in different corners of the apartment for guests come to life characters from “The Master and Margarita.”

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Bulgakov tours in Moscow

The Bulgakov Museum in Moscow offers 4 routes around the neighborhood of Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, ranging from 1 to 4.5 hours in length. The most difficult one takes guests along the footsteps of the heroes of “The Master and Margarita”. Having overcome a little more than 5 kilometers, tourists visit 19 addresses. These include the Patriarchal Ponds with a bench where Voland and Berlioz talked with the Homeless, and the place where the ill-fated Annushka spilled oil, and Alexander Garden, where Margarita was sad, and the former Torgsin, where Behemoth was mischievous. Visitors will look at the house, which served as a model for the housing of the Master, will walk down the alley where the main characters met.

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The hour-long walk “The First Address” touches 12 sites united by the theme of Patriarch’s Ponds. Here and places associated with Bulgakov’s biography, and points fixed in the famous novel. The journey “In Search of Margarita’s Mansion” will take about an hour and a quarter. Whether tourists will find the heroine’s authentic house is unknown. Usually Bulgakov was precise about architectural and topographical details, but the Gothic mansion described in the novel has not yet been found. Most likely, the author combined in it the features of several standing in the neighborhood to emphasize the demonic spirit of the hostess of Satan’s ball. One more excursion, acquaintance with Bulgakov’s Prechistenka, will stretch for an hour. Bulgakov and his friends – representatives of the old Moscow intelligentsia – lived in this neighborhood after moving from Bolshaya Sadovaya, and the story described in “Dog’s Heart” unfolded here.

Souvenirs

You can buy souvenirs at the Bulgakov Museum – a map with marked memorable places of Bulgakov’s Moscow, magnets with quotes from “The Master and Margarita”, badges, postcards, eco-bags with images of graffiti-painted stairs leading to the writer’s apartment.

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Opening hours and tickets

The Bulgakov Museum is not open on Mondays, on Thursday guests are welcome from 2 to 9 pm, on other days – from 12 to 7 pm. Once a month, on the third Sunday, everyone who wants to visit the museum is allowed in freely. In those months when there are all-Russian actions, for example, “Night of Museums”, free visits on Wednesdays are canceled. The cost of an adult ticket is 150 rubles, schoolchildren and pensioners pay 50 rubles, and full-time students go free of charge. On Wednesday evenings they conduct one and a half hour excursions for 300 rubles per person. Observation tours for 10 people in normal time cost 1500-2500 rubles, depending on the age of visitors. Night theatricalized excursions cost 1500 rubles per person, concerts with a preliminary tour of the Bulgakov Museum – in 1000 rubles.

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How to get there

The Bulgakov Museum in Moscow is located near the Satire Theater, it is usually reached from the Mayakovskaya metro station. The entrance is from the courtyard, to get to the sixth entrance, you need to go under the archway. The exact address of the museum: 10 Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, Moscow. Phone: +7 (495) 970-06-19.

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