SUVOROV MEMORIAL MUSEUM

43 ulitsa Kirochnaya 193015 St. Petersburg
Open: 10am - 6pm
Closed: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and the last Monday of every month
Tel. 279-3914, 279-3916
Nearest metro station: Chernyshevskaya

The museum of the great Russian military leader Alexander Suvorov (1730-1800) first opened in the Academy of the General Staff in 1900 to mark the centenary of his death. In 1904 it moved to a building that had been specially constructed with funds raised by a voluntary nationwide subscription (architect Alexander von Gogen, assisted by Hermann Grimm). Early Russian architectural motifs lend the building the air of a fortress. Its central feature resembles a multitier fortress tower, crowned with a tent. The facades of the wings are decorated with two monumental mosaic panels. One of them, copied from an original by the painter Nikolai Shabunin, depicts Suvorov's departure from his family estate, Konchanskoye, for the Italian campaign of 1799. The second, Suvorov Crossing the Alps, is a mosaic reproduction of the picture by Alexei Popov. The panels were created under the supervision of the mosaicists Mikhail Zoshchenko and Nikolai Maslennikov.

During the siege of Leningrad the building was hit by a bomb and severely damaged. The museum was not reopened until 1951, when the repair work (performed by Mikhail Plotnikov) was complete.

The collection itself comprises over 100,000 items, including many of the Generalissimo's personal belongings, weapons and decorations, as well as documents, books, standards, portraits

and a collection of battle paintings. The museum also houses the country's largest collection of tin soldiers, numbering some 50,000 pieces. The displays present the outstanding Russian commander m the broad context of Russian military history and culture.