Travel Notes

Holy Russia

Returns home from Paris

A sweeping exhibit of Russia’s sacred art that made a splash at the Louvre last year has relocated to Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery, where it will spend most of this summer. Holy Russia (svyatayarus.ru) guides the visitors from the early days after Russia’s baptism through its most valued art through the Petrine era, and includes 450 items from Russian and European museums.

Curators in Russia and France have already called this exhibition (carefully assembled for last year’s Year of Russia in France) “unprecedented,” because it brings together the oldest Russian artifacts of religious art from different corners of the world. Unfortunately, however, not all of the artworks from non-Russian collections shown at the Louvre made it to Moscow. And some, like Kommersant’s Sergei Khodnev, have complained about the Tretyakov Gallery’s poor presentation of the exhibit. Still, all the famous pieces —  from the fifteenth century Radzivill Chronicle to the thirteenth century Golden Doors of Suzdal’s Nativity of the Virgin Cathedral, to the mysterious twelfth century shoulder piece allegedly worn by Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky — together in one place, is probably a one-time-only occurrence and worth seeing if you are in Moscow before August 14. After Moscow, the exhibit will move to the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.

Jewish History

First museum of its type

A free museum on the history of Russia’s Jewish community, the first in Russia, has opened in Moscow. Items on view are from the late eighteenth century through Soviet times, and include photos, household and cultural items, all of which were discovered by the museum’s founders on forays across Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, and from distant parts of the diaspora. The museum is open on weekdays by appointment at 10/3 Petrovsko-Razumovskaya alleya. (495) 357-83-83. mievr.ru

Virtual Tourism

Panoramas of Venice of the North

The Russian Museum in St. Petersburg has launched an online virtual tour website (rmtour.ru) where one can experience the Mikhailovsky Palace and Garden, St. Michael’s Castle, and even the Cabin of Peter the Great, along with several other landmarks in Russia’s northern capital. Over a hundred panoramic shots and explanations in English take you back to re-experience a visit to Russia or, if you have never visited, give you a sneak preview.

Sea Terminal

Watery path into St. Petersburg

A new terminal on St. Petersburg’s Vasilyevsky Island was opened in May. It will cater exclusively to tourists arriving on cruise ships, presumably from the Baltics. The project, called Sea Façade, also entails building a river port so that passengers can transfer from cruise ships to boats going to city center.

Sakharov Museum

Site looking for donations

Following the 90-year anniversary of the birth of Russia’s brilliant physicist and landmark dissident, Andrei Sakharov, the Sakharov Foundation has announced a call for donations to turn Sakharov’s Moscow apartment into a modern museum. “Should it be a scientist’s museum? An apartment of a human rights defender? An intellectual’s abode?” the website (sakharov-today.ru) asks.

In the 1970s, the apartment, located at 48 Zemlyanoy val, was both a home for Sakharov and his wife Yelena Bonner, and a space for press-conferences crammed with foreign correspondents, despite the KGB agents on duty outside. Sakharov was arrested in 1980 for protesting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and sent to internal exile in Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) for the next six years. He died of a heart attack in the apartment on December 14, 1989.