Delicate metal work, bright sparkling gems, precious fabrics… You will have a chance to appreciate the highest artistic level and particular historical and cultural value of the exhibits which have made the Armoury of the Moscow Kremlin a world-wide known museum.
The museum collections were based on the precious items that had been preserved for centuries in the tsars’ treasury and the Patriarch’s vestry. The Armoury Chamber preserves ancient state regalia, ceremonial tsar’s vestments and coronation dresses, vestments of the Russian Orthodox Church’s hierarchs, the largest collection of gold and silverware by Russian craftsmen, West European artistic silver, ceremonial weapons and arms, carriages, horse ceremonial harness.
Museums
Dear guests, we are glad to offer you tours to various Moscow museums. Please have a look at this page and we are sure that you will find here a museum which you would like to visit! Normal duration of museum tour is 2hours with the price of 70 USD.
The Armoury
The Tretyakov Gallery
The Tretyakov gallery in Moscow is one of two finest collections of Russian art (along with Russian museum in Saint-Petersburg) from early icons to the end of the XIX century. Trying to cover the whole collection in one go can be exhausting, though: a guide can be really helpful to see the best of what the gallery offers.
We will see the peak of icon-painting art - the Holy Trinity by Rublev. Portraits of Pushkin, Dostoevsky and the tzar Ivan the Terrible will bring a new perspective to these individuals, while breathtaking landscapes will fill you with emotions. Along with just an aesthetic pleasure, a guided tour of the Tretyakov gallery gives an easy and pleasant lesson of Russian history due to its numerous historical canvases, depicting either great events or everyday life moments.
The Tretyakov Gallery (The new buiding)
The gallery's collection reflects clearly how people felt during the 20th century in Russia. In the early 1900s there was a spirit of revolution in the air. The atmosphere was one of 'anything goes' now and that the old 'rule book' can be thrown away. Artists were inspired to paint in very different way.The vivid colors and primitive, naïve forms that typified the work of Natalia Goncharova, Marc Shagal, Vasily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin are full of wild, out-of-control energy, became well-known around the world.
The period of Russian avant-garde had been lasted into the 1930s, when art came under the control of the state. Socialist realism was proclaimed the only permissible form of art in the country. That isn't to say that there were no masterpieces among these works. A cult of youth, strength and happiness is reflected in the work of this period, gradually changing to romantic sadness in the post-war years. However, the officialy sanctioned line in Soviet art wasn’t the only one: from 60s onwards, non-conformist art developed in parallel with the official style: ”Iron Curtain” made of iron is among them. The latest exhibits in the Gallery date from 2007.
The Gallery of 19th and 20th century European and American art
Worldwide famous collection of the paintings by French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and masters of the early 20th century are on display in this Gallery, which is a part of Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. Most of canvases were taken from the collections of two Moscow art-lovers Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov, gathered before the Revolution. Each of 26 rooms reflects a single movement in European Art or the work of a single artist. You will see the works of Claude Monet, August Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Andre Derain and Henri Rousseau.
The Space Museum
The first satellite, the first animal flight to space, the first man in space, the first man to walk in space… All these achievements were celebrated in the USSR as the private achievement of every Soviet. In the Space museum you can see the preserved remains of pioneer canine cosmonauts Belka and Strelka, Yuri Gagarin’s space suit, and a full-size Mir space station model to pop into and learn about challenges Russians met during their initial steps into space exploration.
Not everything in the museum is explained English – a guided tour is to save you from guessing what this or that exhibit is for.
The museum is underneath a tall elegant monument with a launching rocket on a top, which itself is worth a look as one of the symbols of 60s Moscow, when every other boy dreamed of being an astronaut. Another attraction from this era, the VDNKh exhibition, is a 5 minute walk from the museum.
The State Historical Museum
While exploring the Red Square, it is hard to overlook the crimson building of the State Historical Museum that sits right at the entrance to the square. The number of exhibits in this museum is so big that it would take you five years to see them all, devoting only a minute to each item. Of course, this tour won't take us so long because it serves the purpose of showing you the main highlights of the museum following an optimized route. We can help you to find your way in this immense museum, turning ages of this land history into 90 minutes tour, both entertaining and informative.
The Museum of Contemporary History of Russia
Our tour of this popular museum will take you on a journey exploring the fascinating and at times controversial history of Russia over the last 150 years. You will leave with a real understanding of Russia's political development and of the impact it has had on its citizens. Since a lot of the museum’s exhibits and their descriptions are in Russian, it is helpful to be accompanied by an English Speaking Guide.
The tour will highlight:
- Life in Russia at the end of the 19th Century
- The revolutionary times at the beginning of the 20th Century which led to the "War Communism", where money were abolished
- Life in the country under Stalin’s regime: industrialization, collective farming, purges and official propaganda
- Russia's involvement in the 2nd World War
- The impact of the competition between the USSR and the USA under Khrushev
- The development of socialism under Brezhnev
- Perestroika of Gorbachev and his Glasnost policy
- Yeltsin's response to the Coup d'etat of 1991 which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union
The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (main building)
It was a dream in the XIX century to open a public museum of the world art in Moscow. Originally, it was intended as a place, where art students could watch the best examples of classical Greek and Rome art. Plaster casts of the most famous sculptures of antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance were commissioned.
However, the true essence of art can be appreciated only by contemplating the original. The collection of the Egyptian arts laid the foundation for its collection of originals. Now it represent all major ancient and European art trends up to the end of the XIX century.
Along with Egyptian sarcophaguses, we’ll see breathtaking gold diadem, excavated by Schliemann in ancient Troy. European painting is represented by the works of the best European painters - Lucas Cranach the Elder, Brueghel, Rubens, Rembrandt, El Greco and Poussin.