Pushkin Museum

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts is a huge place for art.

It is the largest museum of European art in Moscow, Russia. You can find it on Volkhonka street. It sits right across from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. People love visiting to see amazing things from many different times. Since 1981, the museum has also hosted a music festival. This festival is called Sviatoslav Richter's December Nights. It brings music and art together in one special place.

The museum holds about 700,000 different items.

These include paintings, drawings, and many sculptures. You can see beautiful mosaics and icons from the Byzantine era. There are also over 600 Western European sculptures. Some art pieces come from the 6th century, and some are very new. The museum even has a massive collection of coins. This numismatic collection has more than 200,000 items and 3,000 books.

You might also see ancient items from Egypt or Southwest Asia.

A man named Ivan Tsvetaev started this museum. He was a professor and a director. He wanted Moscow to have its own fine arts museum. He worked with a man named Yuriy Nechaev-Maltsov to make this happen. The building was designed by Roman Klein and Vladimir Shukhov. Construction began in 1898 and lasted until early 1912. Ivan Rerberg helped with the engineering for twelve years. The museum had different names for a long time. It was first called the Alexander III Museum. In 1937, it was renamed to honor the poet Alexander Pushkin. This was the 100th anniversary of his death.

Many interesting things have happened at the museum over the years. In 1981, the museum held a special show called the Moscow-Paris exhibition. In 2016, experts found 59 Italian Renaissance sculptures inside the museum. These statues had been missing since the Second World War. They were originally from collections in Berlin. In 2008, President Dmitri A. Medvedev planned a big restoration. This plan cost $177 million to fix the building. Later, a plan for a huge expansion was made in 2009. This expansion was meant to cost 22 billion rubles.

The museum is always changing and growing. A new architect named Yuri Grigoryan was chosen in 2014. He is working on a plan to build modern buildings. His design will also save an old gas station from the 1930s. This station will be kept safe inside a new glass structure. This helps keep the history of the area alive. The museum connects the ancient past to our modern world. It shows how people have made art for hundreds of years. It is a place where history stays alive for everyone to see.