The State Historical Museum in Moscow
The State Historical Museum in Moscow is the country’s largest collection of rare antiquities, priceless sculptures and artworks, and unique documents. The exhibits tell about the formation of the Russian state from the most ancient times to the beginning of the last century. In the richest vaults of the museum funds there are millions of storage units, and each item contains a piece of history. In 1990 the museum building, as an integral part of the architectural ensemble of Red Square, was included in the register of the World Material Heritage of Mankind. Every year, more than one million visitors get acquainted with the exposition.
Video: State Historical Museum in Moscow
Contents- Highlights
- History of the State Historical Museum
- Architecture of the building
A walk through the History Museum - Selected themed exhibits
- Practical information
- Souvenirs
- How to get there
Highlights
The State Historical Museum has a large store with a wide range of souvenirs, reproductions and informative literature.
.History of the State Historical Museum
The idea of creating a special museum of the history of the Russian state belonged to the heir to the throne, the future Emperor Alexander III. In his youth, he became acquainted with similar collections abroad. The impetus for the realization of the Tsesarevich’s idea was the Moscow Polytechnic Exhibition held in 1872. As part of the industrial salon, an exposition of Russian antiquities, war relics from the Crimean War and the conquest of the Caucasus was also shown. At the end of the exhibition, it was decided to keep the magnificent collections in a separate room and present them to the public. This year is considered to be the date of foundation of the historical museum. By the way, the main exhibits of the industrial exhibition were transferred to the Polytechnic Museum, created in the same year on Prechistenka by amateurs of science and technology.
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Construction lasted six years and was completed by March 1881, on the eve of the coronation of Emperor Alexander III, but the exposition was opened to the public only two years later. The museum was named after the enthroned tsar. The new cultural institution was headed by one of the inspirers of its creation, a world-renowned archaeologist, researcher of Russian antiquities and philanthropist Count Alexei Uvarov, who donated some of his personal collections of rarities to the funds. Many Russian collectors followed his example. For example, Peter Ivanovich Shchukin, an industrial magnate and a famous collector of antiquities, donated a collection of 300,000 objects to the Imperial Museum of History in 1905. Curiously, this figure far exceeded the number of artifacts in the museum collection itself. The Tsar’s younger brother, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov, became the honorary chairman of the museum’s board.
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In 1914, the Historical Museum acquired its own library with a repository of manuscripts and old printed editions. Several rooms of the building had to be remodeled for the arrangement of book depositories and reading rooms. Among the book treasures stored here are the “Izbornik” of Prince Svyatoslav in 1073, the Mstislav’s Gospel, written in 1117 and decorated with multicolored miniatures.
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After the revolution of 1917, a significant part of the museum collections were sent to basement storage, and unfortunately, some exhibits suffered significant damage or disappeared altogether. Paintings and decor of the halls were destroyed, many details of the facades were dismantled. In the meantime, the GIM’s holdings grew considerably – valuables from liquidated Moscow museums and monasteries, from the confiscated estates of aristocrats and wealthy businessmen near Moscow were brought here. Since the 1920s, the exposition updated by the new authorities began to reflect communist ideology.
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During the years of the Great Patriotic War, the museum did not stop working, despite the bombing of Moscow by enemy aircraft. The most valuable artifacts were evacuated to the eastern limits of the country, many collections were moved to the basements of the building, in their place appeared moulages. In the postwar period in the halls of the second floor opened expositions reflecting the stages of the formation of the Soviet Union.
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Only 100 years after the erection of the Historical Museum, when the pre-revolutionary engineering communications began to fail, the rather dilapidated building was decided to be restored. Large-scale works were carried out from 1986 to 2003. The building, recognized as a particularly valuable object of cultural heritage, was restored to its original appearance. The restorers, guided by Sherwood’s sketch projects and old photographs, restored the lost elements of the exterior and interior decoration, paintings of the walls and vaults of the museum halls. The rooms were equipped with climate control systems that maintain optimal temperature and air humidity for fragile exhibits. A new exhibition hall and Polovetsky courtyard appeared on the free space of the inner courtyard.
.Today, the State Historical Museum exhibits about 22,000 carefully selected artifacts. A superficial survey of the historical treasures on display here would take several days. Experts claim that a leisurely and thoughtful examination of the exposition will take at least five years!.
Architecture of the building
The building is made of shaped bricks of warm terracotta-red shade with smart white inserts, harmonizing with the color scheme of medieval buildings of the Kremlin. The external appearance of the building reflects the then fashionable features of the pseudo-Russian architectural style with its complex patterned facade masonry, turrets, hipped roofs, kokoshniks, zakomars, kiotzas, false balconies and other exquisite elements. About six hundred skillful masons worked on the scaffolding.
. Hundreds of windows of the building, designed by architect and restorer Alexander Popov, are decorated with wooden bindings – a replica of Old Russian mica windows. The chief architect Sherwood planned to decorate the inter-window apertures of the facade walls with multicolored ceramic tiles, but there were not enough funds for majolica. More than one and a half million gold rubles – a colossal sum for those times – were spent on the construction..
A walk through the Historical Museum
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To the right of the entrance is the memorial office of the first director of the museum, Count Uvarov. Next, visitors pass a portal leading to an enfilade of three lettered rooms.
The luxurious Byzantine Hall “A” reminds the interiors of the ancient Cathedral of St. Sophia in Constantinople. The exposition presented here is poetically named “Metal of the Gods”. It demonstrates works of Orthodox art of XII-XIX centuries and church artifacts of other Christian denominations: icons and liturgical books in precious settings with semi-precious stones, chests, bowls, candlesticks, gold and silver utensils.
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Hall “B” is decorated with a view of the shores of the Bosporan kingdom, which once owned the Kerch Strait. The panorama was painted by the marinist Aivazovsky. The theme of the exhibition is “Metal of the Tsars”: coins and battle orders, gold nuggets, award weapons, platinum standards of weights and measures.
.Genuine treasures, symbols of luxury and wealth, you will see in the showcases of Hall “B”. Here shimmer magnificent jewelry created by masters of different countries and epochs – from antiquity to the beginning of the XXI century. Connoisseurs of jewelry art have the opportunity to view other collections of jewels by visiting the vault located in one of the towers of the building.
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On the first floor of the State Historical Museum there are 21 rooms, where the history of Russia from the Paleolithic cave tribes to the era of Tsar Peter the Great is presented in sequence. The rooms are decorated with thematic works by Russian painters. Among them is Vasnetsov’s “Stone Age” – a monumental circular panel decorating the frieze of the hall of primitive history. Here you will see the most ancient works of art found on the territory of Russia – female figures carved from mammoth tusks about 20,000 years ago, images of idols and totem animals.
.The mood for perception of the Bronze Age artifacts exposition is created by the painting “Night Sacrifice” by Semiradsky. At the walls of the hall, attention is attracted by stone statues that have stood for thousands of years on the tops of mounds of the Black Sea steppes.
Two halls are devoted to the history of the Old Russian state with its capital in Kiev. Chronicles mention 15 Slavic tribes united under the rule of the great Kiev princes. “The Tale of Bygone Years” calls the exact date of the creation of the power – 862. And already in 988 a fateful event took place: the Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir spread the Christian doctrine among his subjects. In the Scandinavian sagas of that time, the rapidly developing Kievan Rus was called Gardarika – the country of cities.
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The historical narrative continues in the fifteen halls of the second floor of the State Historical Museum. The exposition begins with the era of the palace coups that followed the death of Emperor Peter the Great, and is brought to the period of reign of the autocrat Alexander III (80-90-ies of the XIX century).
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.The last hall is dedicated to the era of Alexander the Peacemaker for a reason. It was Alexander III and Tsarina Maria Feodorovna who became the first visitors to the Historical Museum in the spring of 1883.
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The rooms of the third floor are designed to accommodate traveling exhibitions and demonstrations of new acquisitions. The museum’s holdings are replenished annually by 10,000 to 15,000 items transferred from archaeological field expeditions and sent by private donors. Valuable books, icons and paintings are purchased at auctions. Unexpected gifts are presented by descendants of Russian aristocrats living in foreign countries.
.Selected thematic expositions
No matter how vast the halls of the State Historical Museum are, only a small fraction of the collected treasures are displayed here. The collections have long overflowed the vaults. To create separate thematic expositions reflecting the landmark milestones of the country’s history, several branches of the Historical Museum have been established in the capital.
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Next to the main building, on Revolution Square, 2/3, there is the Museum of the Patriotic War of 1812. In the ancient Izmailovo estate, the formation of the Central Museum of the Russian Cossacks is being finalized. More than 600 unique items have been transferred here: personal award weapons, orders and medals, uniforms and banners of Cossack regiments, military topographic maps, documents, paintings, sculptural portraits. Restoration workshops and part of the storerooms are also located there.
.Another interesting museum belonging to the GIM can be seen in Zaryadye. In the interiors of the old Romanov estate is an exposition recreating the life of the Moscow nobility of the XVI-XVII centuries.
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The 120,000 m² exhibition complex is being built in the village of Kommunarka, 4 kilometers southwest of the Moscow Ring Road.
.An exposition center dedicated to more than a thousand years of history of the Russian Orthodox Church will be built near the Novodevichy Monastery by 2023.
.Practical information
The State Historical Museum is open from 10:00 to 19:00, on Friday and Saturday – until 21:00. The ticket offices stop selling tickets one hour before the GIM closes. Tuesdays are a day off.
.The cost of an entrance ticket is 400 rubles. Visitors under the age of 16 years are admitted free of charge. Beneficiaries pay 200 rubles. You can buy a family ticket for 600 rubles for four people (two adults + two teenagers under 18 years old).
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The ticket office offers audio tour guides voiced in Russian (800 rubles) and in foreign languages (1100 rubles). Special audioguides detailing the new expositions are created for the opening of major exhibitions of items from the collection’s storages.
Information banners and LCD touch screens are installed in the halls. With their help, you can view a three-dimensional image of the exhibit you are interested in from all sides, as well as leaf through an ancient folio presented in the showcase.
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Souvenirs
You’ll find the Historical Museum’s signature store next door, in the old three-story building No. 5/1 on Nikolskaya Street facing Red Square. The shop offers a wide range of gift editions of books on Russian history, colorful albums, catalogs of museum collections, and reproductions of art paintings. Souvenirs, children’s literature, thematic board games, disks with video reviews of expositions and many other things are sold here. The store is open daily from 09:00 to 21:00.
.How to get there
The address of the State Historical Museum in Moscow is Red Square, 1. The nearest metro stations are Okhotny Ryad (to the northwest), Teatralnaya (to the north), and Ploshchad Revolutsii (to the northeast).
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