State Historical Museum

The Historical Museum closes off Red Square on the northern side and is visible from any point on it: the red-brick mass with turrets, tented roofs and white patterned detail deliberately echoes the Kremlin walls and the Cathedral of the Intercession. The building was raised in 1875-1883 to a design by Vladimir Sherwood and the engineer Anatoly Semyonov on the site of the old Main Pharmacy, which once housed Moscow University. Outwardly it is a stylisation of Russian architecture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but behind the facade hides a structure advanced for its time, with cast-iron framing and top lighting. The halls were painted and decorated by Viktor Vasnetsov, Henryk Siemiradzki and Ivan Aivazovsky, with each room answering to its own era, from the Stone Age to the nineteenth century. The collection is considered the largest in the country on national history: birch-bark documents, weapons, coins, manuscripts and everyday objects of the different social classes. An equestrian monument to Marshal Zhukov stands in front of the main entrance, and the Resurrection Gate next to it is a short way through to Manezhnaya Square.

On the map