The History of Moscow: Exhibition «Moscow. The Evolution of a Guidebook » underway in the capital

From June 29 to July 22 2018 the Museum of Moscow is holding a new exhibition «Moscow. The Evolution of a Guidebook». The exhibition illustrates the change of the image and the content of a guidebook through the centuries in the broadest sense of the word, maps and prints in the beginning and in the end - the 20th century reference books which remain helpful even today when you take a stroll around Moscow.

The exposition showcases prints, maps, plans, unique publications from the collection of the Museum of Moscow, which portray the city in different time. The earliest guidebook of Moscow by Vasily Ruban is dated 1782 and titled «The description of the Imperial Capital City of Moscow». It is housed at the museum’s  Rare Books Collections and is on display now. A board game published in 1947 for young residents to help them discover the architecture of Moscow arouses interest, too. The guidebooks of 1930-1950 are richly illustrated, while the books of the Thaw period are stylish and brief. Many of them remain relevant today, for example, the stroll around the Moscow district of Cheryomushki with a guidebook which came out 50 years ago showed that there were not many major changes in the district.