Alexander Herzen House Museum

Moscow
per. Sivtsev Vrazhek, 27, Moscow
Phones: +7 495 695-53-08
Web site: goslitmuz.ru

The museum consists of two complexes: the first nine halls are located in the memorial "Tuchkovsky" house and are dedicated to the life of A. I. Herzen in Russia, the exhibition "Herzen in the West" is located in a modern annex. The exhibition recreates the living environment of the house, presents rare autographed books, books from the Herzen library, personal belongings of the writer and his entourage, on the walls — portraits of the writer and his family members. In the last hall of the museum, the atmosphere of the European city of the 1840s — the end of the 1860s, a time of violent upheavals, rapidly changing events, witnessed and participated in by the writer, is recreated. The hall presents a fragment of the interior of the bookseller's shop in London by Herzen's publisher Nikolai Trubner, with numerous Herzen publications of the time, furniture and household items. On display is a lifetime bust of Herzen by A. Grass, created in 1858-1859 by order of Trubner.
The exposition is equipped with many advanced facilities, giving the opportunity to take in the sights of the last century: the streets of European cities in "foreign" hall; kiosk; sound design "Rome", "Paris", "Geneva" and "London"; an interactive arch of Russia and Europe and more.
Among the exhibits of the museum there are really exciting things. The tragic story of the death of Herzen's son Kolya and the mother of the writer L. I. Haag in a shipwreck, poignantly told in "Past and Thoughts", is vividly illustrated by a small children's glove and a note by N. A. Herzen: "The glove that Kolya took off in the last minutes of November 16, 1851 in the night". The last lifetime image of N. A. Herzen on a rare daguerreotype of 1852 conveys the expression of deep sorrow and suffering that did not leave her until her last days (N. A. Herzen died in May 1852).
Many relics of the Herzen family were donated to the museum by the descendants of the writer from France, Switzerland, and the United States: a portrait of A. I. Herzen (1836) by A. L. Witberg with the autograph of N. A. Herzen, the writer's wife; her drawings, including a pencil portrait of A. I. Herzen (1851), drawings of Herzen's daughter Tata (Natalia Alexandrovna) — from student works to mature pictorial portraits of her father in the 1860s.

The post-fire Empire mansion with a mezzanine, built in the 1820s, became the third property of Ivan Alekseevich Yakovlev in the area of Arbat and Prechistenka. The house was bought by him in 1839 from General Sergei Alekseevich Tuchkov specifically for the son of Alexander Herzen. In the old house, called "Tuchkovsky", the writer lived with his family from September 1843 until leaving abroad in January 1847. At various times, the owners of this house were: the actress of the Imperial Moscow Theaters Agrafena Timofeevna Saburova (in 1826-early 1830s), the general and poet Sergei Alekseevich Tuchkov (in 1835-1839), Yegor Ivanovich Herzen, the half-brother of the writer (in 1849-1863), the last owner of T. A. Lopukhin (in 1870-1912).
The house has been preserved intact since its reconstruction in 1892, having lost the visible features of the Empire style. In October 1968, the Executive Committee of the Moscow City Council decided to organize the A. I. Herzen Museum as a department of Vladimir Dahl Russian State Literary Museum (then the State Literary Museum).
From February 2008 to March 2012, a complete historical restoration of the Herzen house took place. The mansion remained in its original form, completely intact: the walls were re-boarded, some logs and supporting structures were replaced, and the interiors were restored. On April 6-8, 2012, as part of the celebration of the 200th anniversary of the writer, the House-Museum of A. I. Herzen was officially opened after major restoration.
On December 14, 2012, on the memorable date of the Decembrist uprising, the permanent exhibition of the House-Museum of A. I. Herzen was officially opened. A fundamentally new concept of the exhibition was created and new halls appeared: "Student Room of the 1830s", "Foreign City" and "Trubner's Shop".

In the house in the Sivtsevo Vrazhke Alexander Herzen wrote his first novels "The Magpie Thief", "Doctor Krupov", the novel " Who is to blame?". His friends came here — I. S. Turgenev, critic V. G. Belinsky, philosopher P. Ya. Chaadaev, historian T. N. Granovsky, actor M. S. Shchepkin.

The exhibition recreates the atmosphere of the Herzen house, presents the writer's office. When Herzen went abroad with his family in 1847, he had no idea that he would turn into a political exile.

Feel the breath of the past, to feel the inextricable link past and present in the Museum help rare copies of publications of the Free Russian printing house "North star", "Bell", "Voices from Russia", portraits of contemporaries, Herzen, people close to him for life in Europe, types of cities in Western Europe, where Herzen lived: Paris, Rome, London, Geneva and other memorial items.