Here's a list of museums that should be of interest for traveling Pushkin fans. The hyperlinks lead to each museum's home page, if it has one. In order to read the home pages, you'll need to get KOI-8 fonts. Look here for information on how to set up Netscape to read KOI-8.
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- Pushkin lived in this apartment for the last few years of his life. The first half of the museum is a normal reconstruction of empire decor. The second half is a morbid shrine to the poet. There you'll see the study where he died, the leather couch on which he died, the clock stopped at the time of his death, a lock of his hair, a death mask, a candle carried at his funeral and the vest which he was wearing when he was shot. The museum is located right on the Moika -- If you're coming from Palace Square, cross the canal and take a left. The building is about a block away. Go through an archway into a courtyard, where you'll find the entrance to the museum. Closed Tuesdays.
- The Place of the Duel
- Take the metro to Pionerskaia station. Because everything looks alike in this region of town and there aren't any street signs, the best thing to do is to ask passers-by where to find the "Mesto Dueli." It is about a half mile from the metro station in a wooded park. The monuments themselves consist of two slabs of granite with verses by you-know-who etched on them and a medium-sized obelisk.
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- The musuem is fairly easy to find because is is right next door to the palace. Just take a bus (385) from the train station or, if you prefer to walk, take a right from the station, walk half a mile, turn left, and walk through town until you find the palace.
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- Take buses 371 or 385 from the train station. This is a nice cozy museum, especially if you visit it in the winter when nobody else is there. The friendly workers will point out Natalia's room and the room in which ASP read the last chapter of _Evgenii Onegin_ to Gogol, as well as giving you the history of the place. Don't miss the painting of ASP in a silly white hat. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
Moscow
House-Museum on the Arbat.
- Take the metro to Smolenskaia station and head south down Novinskii bul'var to the beginning of the old Arbat. As you walk down the Arbat, the musuem will be on the right. A friendly warning: this museum is possibly the most boring of the lot. The first floor has various furniture, pictures, and kitsch from the early nineteenth century. Each room on the second floor contains nothing but a shrine depicting different stages in ASP's life. The one advantage of the musuem is its location -- it sits right across the street from McDonald's.
Museum at 18/2 Prechistenka.
- Take the metro on the red line to Kropitkinskaia, then head down Prechistenka. The museum is an unimposing building on a street corner. As well as housing one of ASP's locks of hair, this museum boasts the largest collection of Pushkin statues I've ever seen.
Amboise, France
Musee de la Poste
- If you ever happen to find yourself in the Loire Valley, visit the Musee de la Poste in Amboise. Along with a plethora of postal paraphernalia, they have the pistols that Ernest de Barante lent to his friend Georges d'Anthes in January 1837. (They're displayed next to a French translation of "The Station Master.") Amboise is an hour-long train ride from Paris: Go to Gare d'Austerlitz and take a train heading to Tours. The museum is across the Loire from the train station in Amboise; there are signs downtown showing the museum's exact location.
