At n° 1 Prechistenka Street note the white palace of Prechistenka , typical of late 17C Moscow, and Famitsyne Palace at n° 3. The buildings are a reminder that this road laid out in the 16C between the “white city” and Novodevichy Monastery was kn..

Feodor Chaliapin moved to this early 19C house with a pleasant garden in 1910. Posters, photographs and portraits, stage costumes and handwritten letters, as well as a recording played in the music room, evoke the artist’s everyday life (a venerable ..

The Cathedral of the Saviour, which you can see upon entering the holy gate of Andronikov Monastery, is the oldest stone building in the capital, built between 1410 and 1426. Like many Russian churches, it is decorated with elegant kokoshniki . Wit..

You can’t help but be charmed by the harmony and delicacy of the Novodevichy Monastery complex set amidst leafy gardens and composed of walls and towers. And yet these walls are quite real, making the monastery a true fortress. The impression of ligh..

A veritable fortress on a bend in the Moskova River, this monastery for women is inseparable from the regent Sophia Alekseyevna, who had it rebuilt in the 1680s before living in confinement here until her death after being deposed by her half-brother..

GUM was the state department store. This building constructed in the late 19C, crisscrossed with passageways connecting its galleries and topped by luminous glass ceilings, is now a temple of triumphant capitalism. Over a thousand international shops..

This park, founded in 1820 at the foot of the Kremlin walls, is very popular with Muscovites, who come to cool off around its waterfalls and fountains and to watch the picturesque changing of the guard every day at noon. In addition to the flame o..

In 1612, after the Polish occupation, this beautiful but slightly lopsided and totally asymmetrical church succeeded an earlier wooden sanctuary built in 1380 to celebrate Dmitry Donskoy’s victory over the Tatars in Kulikovo. Remodelled several times..

The destiny of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour is right out of a Russian novel, covering some of the great events in the country’s history. It was a construction project under Alexander I following the victory over Napoleon’s armies, then a monum..

Surrounded (in fine weather) by sidewalk cafés, the little square at the intersection of Arbat Street and Plotnikov Pereulok is decorated with one of Moscow’s most delightful monuments, dedicated to the poet, writer and singer Bulat Okudjava (1924-..

Konstantin Melnikov (1890-1974), who designed several industrial buildings in Moscow (garages in particular) had this three-storey home built for himself between 1927 and 1929. A masterpiece of Constructivist architecture, it is composed of two inter..

The exhibition on display in the Alexander Herzen house is both a biography of a 19C Russian intellectual and a political history of Europe. Although born into an aristocratic family, Herzen (1812-1870) was a social activist who took part in the revo..

The Romantic poet Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841), author of A Hero of Our Time , lived from 1830 to 1832 in this charming one-storey wooden mansion, now strangely out of place next to the tower blocks of New Arbat. Like his idol Pushkin, the fiery Le..

The residence of poetess Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) has a complicated layout - with 11 corners in the bedroom! Tsvetaeva, daughter of the founder of the Pushkin Museum, was also a complex individual. She wrote her first poetry collection at 16 , ba..

Born in 1935, sculptor Alexander Burganov created one of the most photographed statues in Moscow - of Madame Turandot on Arbat Street. The museum, set up around his workshop, is a magical place with a courtyard, an atrium and several rooms with gla..

A must for Pushkin fans. You’ll learn everything about the founder of Russian literature, a brilliant writer and poet – from his life, work and African ancestor Abraham Petrovich Hannibal to his premature death in a duel at the age of 38. The meticul..

Follow in the footsteps of Leo Tolstoy – but wear felt soles to protect the wooden floors in this house where the master of the Russian novel lived from 1882 to 1901. Familiar objects are venerated here – from his desk to his bicycle – along with the..

Posters, photographs and various objects retrace the career and work of Sergei M Eisenstein (1898-1948), who directed Battleship Potemkin (1925) and was the most famous of Soviet filmmakers.

This might be the most accomplished Stalin-era skyscraper in Moscow – except for the pyramid crowning it, apparently requested by Stalin. Finished in 1951, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Building was designed by architects Vladimir Gelfreich..

The objects on display at the National Museum of Modern Russian History are like a Surrealist inventory, ranging from Nikita Khrushchev’s hat and the first dog in space to the model for the battleship Potemkin and Boris Yeltsin standing on a tank. ..