PUSHKIN APARTMENT MUSEUM

12 nab. reki Moiki 191187 St. Petersburg
Open: 1 lam - 5pm
Closed: Tuesdays and the last Friday of every month
Tel. 311-3531,311-3801
Nearest metro stations: Nevsky prospekt and Gostiny Dvor

This is one of the most reven sites of St. Petersburg and one of the most popular museums in the country. It was in this apartment that the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin spent his last four months from 12 October 1836 to his death on 29 January (New Style: February 10) 1837. A museum opened here in 1925.

The house on the Moika was built in the 1720s and later underwent repeated reconstructions. It is associated with such well-known figures of Russian history as Ernst-Johann Biron, Duke of Courland, the favourite of the Empress Anna loannovna, who lived here in the 18th century, and Princess Maria Nikolayevna Volkonskaya, wife of the famous general Sergei Volkonsky and owner of this house in the first quarter of the 19th century.

In 1987 the entire building was turned over to the museum. The apartment has been restored to look exactly as it did in Pushkin's last days and even hours. The interiors of the apartment the lobby, pantry, dining-room, drawing-room, bedroom, nursery and the poet's study - were reconstructed with the aid of sketches made by the poet Vasily Zhukovsky at the time of Pushkin's death. Here one can see pieces of furniture and bric-a-brac typical of a traditional Petersburg interior of the 1830s. Each room also houses authentic objects that belonged to the poet's family.

Pushkin's study is of particular interest. It contains the poet's library, totalling 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... The walls are hung with portraits of the poet's intimate friends, his wife Natalia Nikolayevna, their children and the last portrait of Pushkin to be painted during his lifetime. Among the relics is the waistcoat which Pushkin was wearing when he was shot in his duel with D'Anthes, his death mask and a medallion with a lock of his hair.