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The National Pushkin Museumm

The No.12 house on the embankment of the Moika River is the place where the most famous Russian poet - A.S. Pushkin - lived the last years of his life. After his death other people lived in this flat and the museum devoted to him was opened only in the 20th century. The interior in which the poet and his family had lived was created in all the rooms of the flat and exhibitions about the last days of Pushkin were created.

The museum has a lot of the poet´s personal things too. Some half dozen rooms on the first floor have been refurnished in the royal style of the period. By far, the most interesting thing is Pushkin´s study, which has remained exactly the way he left it when he died. The most impressive feature is the poet´s library, which contains more that 4,500 volumes in 14 different European and Oriental languages.

The National Pushkin Museum in St. Petersburg - one of the oldest literary museums in Russia and the first and the largest National museum dedicated to the poet Alexander Pushkin - was founded in 1879 on the initiative of Professors and students of the Imperial Alexander (formerly, Tsarskoe Selo) Lyceum. The main goal of the creation of the Pushkin Museum was to concentrate in it "all materials connected with life and creative work of Alexander Pushkin".

The National Pushkin Museum is the center for collecting, research and promotion of materials that tell about life and creative work of the great poet. The Museum holds tens of thousands of works of art connected with Pushkin's life, work and epoch; nearly all of the poet's personal belongings that have preserved to the present time; illustrations for his works; the poet's portraits; hundreds of portraits of Pushkin's contemporaries; paintings dedicated to different episodes of the poet's life; and views of various places connected with his biography. The authors of the majority of these works are celebrated Russian artists of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The Museum also stores works of applied art, furniture and a rich book collection, including all of the poet's lifetime editions and the rarest books with autographs of Pushkin's contemporaries. The National Pushkin Museum has become the most important research and educational center for Pushkin studies in Russia. About half a million people visit the Museum annually.

The National Pushkin Museum presents a museum complex which includes the literary exposition "Alexander Pushkin. Life and Creative work" and four memorial branch museums: the Pushkin Apartment Museum, the Lyceum Museum, the Pushkin Country House Museum, and the Nekrasov Apartment Museum, that are located in the buildings nominated the architectural monuments of the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries.

The Pushkin Apartment Museum, located on the river Moika Embankment #12, is the only memorial Pushkin museum in the city which tells about the last period of the poet's life and work. There Pushkin, mortally wounded at the duel, died on January 29, 1837, and there one can see things that belonged to Pushkin and his family. One of the most important events in the Museum life is the holding in the courtyard of the house of the annual memorial meeting on February 10 (the day of the poet's death), which is attended by the community, foreign guests, representatives of the creative intelligentsia, and members of the Russian Government and the Authorities of Saint-Petersburg. At 2.45 p.m., in commemoration of the moment when Pushkin's heart stopped beating, the moment of silence is observed. On Pushkin's birthday - May 26 (June 6, new style) - the Museum holds the festival "Pushkin-Petersburg", in which other cultural institutions of St. Petersburg also take part.

The museum was opened in this house as late as in 1925. Va rious landlords and offices had owned the house be fore. Pushkin's apartment had been considerably al tered. The apartment was fully reh abilitated in 1987 after the archaeological survey, ma jor repairs and restoration work.

Authentic Pushkin's belon gings are scarce. Most of them are displayed in the po et's study. A contemporary reminis ced: "His study was spa cious, light and clean, there was nothing extravagant, intricate or sumptuous, nothing stunning, but artless austerity everywhere". Books dominate the study. Pushkin had a library of about four thousand books in fourteen languages. He admired and treasured old and rare publications rum maging for them in book shops. He was also invariably attracted by new Rus sian and European publi cations.

Moika 12 Embankment.
(812) 311-35-31, (812) 315-95-13
Metro:Nevsky Prospect

Daily except Tuesday and the last Friday of each month, 10:30-17:00 (the booking-office closes at 16:00).

For foreigners 60-200R

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