Returning to the Noble Nest
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Another noble estate in Moscow’s center is switching to private ownership. The event is interesting in itself, especially because the new owner is the descendant of a family which left a bright trace in Russia’s history and once owned this estate. The financier from Switzerland, merchant and descendant of the Decembrist Sergei Muraviev-Apostol – Christopher Muravieff-Apostol – will open a private museum in Moscow. It will commence operations in February at the estate, a two-story wooden mansion on Staraya Basmannaya Street, which endured the Moscow fire of 1812. When you consider that the restorers strove to preserve all of the building’s authentic elements, the event’s uniqueness for Moscow, which has grown used to barbaric reconstructions of antiquity, becomes apparent. Sergey Sobyanin personally delivered the certificate of long-term rental entitlement to the mansion’s new owner, who paid for its restoration. The rental payment will be symbolic – one ruble per meter.
This estate certainly should have perished. After miraculously escaping the fire of 1812, it twice eluded demolition. The first time was in the early 20th century, when a guest house was planned on its site, and the second time under the USSR. But the wooden estate persevered with iron resilience.
“When Muraviev-Apostol’s descendants rented this house from Moscow, it was a dump,” says the director general of the house-museum, Tatiana Makeeva. “The ceiling was leaking, the floor rotted, the walls destroyed. Christopher looked at this and decided to restore it with his own funds.”
Christopher, despite his European name, is a Russian noble by birth. And he bears the historical surname – Muraviev-Apostol. In the early 1990s, nearly 80 years after emigration, his family arrived in its historical homeland. They were received quite warmly and shown the family estate. Back then there were even plans for restoring the building, but in the wild 1990s the city was incapable of such tasks. The estate whiled away this era, until 2000, when the Muraviev-Apostols rented the building and began restoration on their own.
Twelve years later, the museum is opening for visitors with an unusual exhibit. The theme is the noble family’s quiet life before the Decembrist uprising. Standing, sitting and playfully looking out from the corner in each room are cardboard figures of nobles, women and damsels. Don’t seek historical personalities among them; they’re only meant to breathe life into the restored building. But the faces looking out from the pictures on the walls are authentic. The famous Moscow collectors Tatyana and Sergey Podstanitsky provided the museum with their collection. Also authentic is the furniture, which is still en route from Europe. Year after year it was collected from European auctions – only authentic, from the 17th to 19th centuries, and only Russian. The same requirements applied for the lamps. Even the ovens that heated the building were preserved. And to demonstrate that the estate was restored with maximal historical accuracy, small “windows” were made in the walls so visitors can see the building’s wooden insides.
The home-museum won’t be limited to one exhibit and the Decembrist topic. Other cultural events will also take place here.
Tatyana Melikian
Source: Moskovsky Komsomolets
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