Moscow’s State Historical Museum in Photos

Take a walk to the Red Square and you will notice a stately dark red building, which looks like a castle among the other fairytale-like monuments around. It’s none other than Moscow’s State History Museum.

According to Wiki, “the museum was was founded in 1872 by Ivan Zabelin, Aleksey Uvarov and several other Slavophiles interested in promoting Russian history and national self-awareness. Its current exhibitions range from relics of prehistoric tribes that lived on the territory of present-day Russia, through artworks acquired by members of the Romanov dynasty. The total number of objects in the museum’s collection comes to millions.”

The current building where the State Historical Museum is has an interesting history.

It was formerly occupied by the Principal Medicine Store, built by order of Peter the Great in the Moscow baroque style. Several rooms in that building housed royal collections of antiquities. Other rooms were occupied by the Moscow University, founded by Mikhail Lomonosov in 1755.

Like in my post on ‘Four top sights to visit around Moscow’s Red Square’, I honestly think Moscow’s State Historical Museum is only worth a visit if you are into Russian history and have some knowledge of Russian.

This is because most of the exhibits (except the gold/diamond one) does not come with English descriptions. The ones at the second level do have English leaflets and a map of where the exhibits are located, but it’s just inconvenient trying to locate where the exhibits are and then reading the description about it.

A tip, if you’re thinking of visiting both the State Historical Museum as well as St Basil’s Cathedral, purchase your tickets from the museum first, instead of the cathedral. It cost about (RUB500, USD15.21, SGD20), versus if you pay (RUB300, USD9.10, SGD12) for entry into each monument (Total RUB600)

Let’s hope ‘Moscow’s State Historical Museum in Photos’ will shed some light should you choose to go or not.