Permanent Exhibition

Hall 1. The salon of the Princess Z.A.Volkonskaya

The first hall of the museum is dedicated to Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya and her literary salon. With the help of portraits, drawings, literary works, and household items, the exposition of the hall tells about the construction of the mansion, its owners, and the literary salon, which became the heart of the literary and cultural life of Moscow in the first half of the 19th century.

Hall 2. Temporary exhibitions

Hall 3. Life and works of Nikolai Ostrovski

The third hall of the museum is dedicated to the life and works of the famous Soviet writer Nikolai Ostrovsky. The exposition includes personal items, items of the Ostrovsky family, documents, and photos from the family Ostrovsky archive.

The memorial apartment of Nikolai Ostrovsky

The memorial apartment of Nikolai Ostrovsky presents the viewer with an untouched 1930s interior. It was in this environment that the writer worked on the novel Born by the Storm and met with famous persons. There was also a discussion at a visiting meeting of the Presidium of the Writers' Union of the first volume of his second novel «Born by the Storm», which was not completed due to the writer’s early death on December 22, 1936.

In the 1935 year, N. A. Ostrovsky was provided with an apartment at the address — Gorky street, 40, apt. No. 39, where our museum is located today. The apartment consisted of three rooms and a kitchen, which were furnished with governmental furniture. In this apartment, Ostrovsky had begun to write his second novel «Born of the Storm».

Nowadays, the memorial apartment includes two rooms: a memorial dining room and a memorial cabinet, which had saved the interiors in which the writer lived and worked in the last years of his life. In 1940, after Ostrovsky’s death, the apartment became a memorial museum. The rooms have preserved the furnishings of those years, the writer’s personal belongings, books, photos of family and friends.