The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

We leave the Pashkov House behind on our left and now enter a small and quiet street where The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is located. A Kolymazhny (Wagon) yard where the tsar's carriages were kept was situated here. For some time, a transit prison used to be at that place. At the beginning of the 20th century the territory was given to Moscow University that was going to build a Museum of fine arts. Its founder and the first director was Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev, a Moscow university professor and father of the famous Russian poetess Marina Tsvetaeva. The museum was opened on the 100th anniversary of the Patriotic War of 1812. Emperor Nikolai II attended the celebrations.

The museum was based on the examples of the plaster cast museums at European universities. Director Tsvetaev often visited other countries including Greece, and Egypt and made exact copies of statues of Roman emperors, fragments of Greek temples, portals of Roman and gothic cathedrals. He received great help: for example, R.I.Klein, a museum architect, decorated the facade with antique conic columns; architect F.O.Shekhtel presented the museum with moulds of the Pergama altar of the 2nd century A.D. M.S.Shchekin, a diplomat and collector, presented works by old Italian masters of the 15th - 16th centuries. Egyptologist V.S.Golenishchev donated his collection of old Egyptian art to the museum.

In 1932, the museum was renamed the State Museum of fine arts, and it was honored to bear the name of A.S.Pushkin on the 100th anniversary of the poet's death.