Museums of Russia: The Ostrovsky House-Museum in Moscow to be restored for the 200th anniversary of the playwright

The Ostrovsky House-Museum – one of the branches of the Bakhrushin Museum – will be restored for the 200th anniversary of the playwright. The works are set to be concluded in 2023.

The two-storey wooden building in the classical style is an object of cultural heritage of federal significance. It is located at Malaya Ordynka Street (house 9/12, building 6). A modern exhibition space will open at the estate, which includes other sites as well.

The restoration works began this spring. In addition to Alexander Ostrovsky’s mansion, the museum complex also features two residential buildings of the second half of the XIX – early XX century, and an almshouse of the late XIX century, where the atmosphere of the merchant tea house will be recreated.

The collections of the Ostrovsky Museum contain about 50 thousand items. In particular, those are diaries, notebooks and autographs of the playwright, as well as letters of Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolay Nekrasov, Pyotr Tchaikovsky and other figures of culture.

Today, the complex creation of a museum and theatre district, dedicated to the history of the national theatre and based on the Bakhrushin State Central Theatre Museum, is underway with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. In addition to the restored Ostrovsky House-Museum, it will include the Yermolova House-Museum, the Mikhail Tschepkin House-Museum, the Vsevolod Meyerhold Apartment-Museum and other establishments. They will be tied together by a common concept, but each space will have its own content. The main part of the exhibition complex will be located near the Paveletskaya subway station: these objects will open in 2024, the remaining branches – in 2025.