Moscow Guide
The northern suburbs
The Vasnetsov House
Address: Across the Garden Ring from Tsvetnoy bulvar
Opening time: Wed– Sun 10am–5.30pm; closed last Thurs of each month
Price: R160
The Viktor Vasnetsov House (dom-muzey V.M. Vasnetsova) is a delightfully archaic anomaly amid the tower blocks across the Ring from Tsvetnoy bulvar. To find it, cross beneath the flyover and head up the grass slope into a housing estate, turning left 50m later; the house at the far end of pereulok Vasnetsova is instantly recognizable by its timbered upper floor, with a terem-style belvedere above the entrance door. Its former owner was a key figure in the Russian revival style, who believed that "a true work of art expresses everything about a people … It conveys the past, the present and, perhaps, the future of the nation" and sought to express this in his own work. An architect as well as a painter, he designed the facade of the Tretyakov Gallery, a church for the artists' colony at Abramtsevo, and the wooden house in Moscow where he lived for 32 years until his death in 1926.
Its ground-floor rooms are furnished with tiled stoves, chairs and cabinets, designed by Vasnetsov himself. The pieces are massive but so delicately carved as to be fit for a boyar's palace. Echoes of medieval Russia abound, from pictures of processions to a chain-mail tunic, fixed to the spiral staircase leading to his studio. Its cathedral-like space is filled by huge paintings of warriors confronting monsters, and various Russian fairytales.