Sightseeing

ALEXANDER PUSHKIN APARTMENT MUSEUM One the most popular museums in the country, the house on Moika embankment, 12 is known as the last residence of the celebrated Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. After he married Nathalie Goncharov, the Pushkins had to change their accommodation place four times within five years and eventually they settled in the eleven-room apartment on the first floor of this house on Moika, stretching in two parallel enfilades with the guest rooms opened on the Moika and the dwelling rooms on the yard. Built in the 1720s, the house originally belonged to Baron Ivan Cherkasov, Peter the Great’s secretary and later head secretary to Empress Elizabeth; then Ernst-Johann Biron, Duke of Courland, the favourite of the Empress Anna loannovna, lived here in the 18th century, and in the first quarter of the 19th century Princess Maria Nikolayevna Volkonskaya, wife of the famous general Sergei Volkonsky was the owner of this house. By the time the Pushkins moved in, the building was owned by Princess Sophie Volkonsky, the general’s sister, who rebuilt the house in a classic spirit. It was in this apartment that the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin spent his last four months from 12 October 1836 to his death: mortally wounded at duel with Georges d’Antes, Pushkin was taken home in the afternoon February 8. The poet spend two agonising days on a bed made for him on a big leather-upholstered sofa in his study, before death came on February, 10. Gendarmes appeared quite soon; the study was sealed up, and the coffin was taken to the anteroom for the public to pay last tribute to the poet. Shortly after the funeral (Pushkin was buried at his mother’s graveside in the Svyatogorsky Monastery in Pskov), the widow and the children vacated the flat and a police office moved in. A memorial museum was opened on the premises in 1925 - the apartment has been restored to look exactly as it did in at the time of Pushkin's death with each room housing authentic belongings of the poet's family. The study, where Pushkin spent is last days contains the poet's library (4,000 volumes in European and oriental languages), his writing desk, his favourite chair, a little bureau beside the couch, an inkstand with the bronze figure of an Ethiopian boy, walking sticks and a portrait of Zhukovsky, bearing the inscription: “To the victorious pupil from the vanquished master”. Open daily 11.00 - 17.00. Closed on Tuesday and on the last Friday of every month. Address: Moiki Reki embankment,12 Phone: 314-00-06, 117-35-31. Metro: Gostiny Dvor, Nevsky Prospect

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