Alexander Blok Memorial Apartment Museum

On Dekabristov Street, in house No. 57, not far from the Pryazhka River, stands a memorial museum dedicated to one of the leading poets of Russia's Silver Age — Alexander Blok. The institution operates as a branch of the State Museum of the History of St Petersburg and occupies two apartments in the building where the poet spent the last nine years of his life. For the city, this is a rare case of a genuinely authentic memorial space: part of the furnishings and Blok's personal belongings have survived and still surround visitors much as they did during his lifetime.

The building was erected in 1874–1876 to a design by the architect Mikhail Peterson for the first-guild merchant Mikhail Petrovsky. After his death in 1892, the house was managed by his sons, under whom the building was twice extended, including an enlargement of the left wing. Blok settled here in the summer of 1912, in apartment 21 on the fourth floor, and in February 1920 moved to apartment 23 on the second floor, where he died on 7 August 1921. The museum opened in 1980, marking the centenary of the poet's birth.

The house was built in the eclectic style typical of the income properties of Kolomna at the end of the nineteenth century. Today the exhibition occupies two floors: on the fourth floor, the poet's study, dining room, bedroom, and the room of his wife, Lyubov Mendeleeva-Blok, have been recreated with genuine period furnishings, while the second floor houses a literary exhibition devoted to the life and work of the author of the poem "The Twelve". This division mirrors Blok's own biography — first a spacious apartment on the upper floor, then more modest lodgings in the final year of his life.

After the poet's death, his archive, library and personal belongings were kept by his widow; after her death in 1939, the collection was transferred to Pushkin House — the Institute of Russian Literature of the Academy of Sciences. The writer Konstantin Paustovsky, who visited the apartment in 1954, was struck by how little the place seemed to match Blok's poetry, and linked the choice of apartment to the poet's wish to shelter in something like a fortress on a quiet outskirt, closer to the gulf. Next to the house, a bridge over the canal — the Bathhouse Bridge — was nicknamed by residents the "Bridge of Sighs": here the poet's admirers would stand for hours, gazing up at the windows of his apartment.

Today the museum pursues an active exhibition programme: in 2008, the memorial apartment opened the exhibition "Blok and His Circle", devoted to the poet's closest social circle. Besides its permanent rooms, the museum runs themed walking tours of Kolomna, literary and musical evenings, and classes for children introducing young visitors to the poetry of the Silver Age.

The Blok Apartment Museum remains one of the few places in the city where authentic surroundings allow a direct encounter with the everyday life and inner world of a Russian poet, while the preserved historical character of Kolomna lends this encounter a particular authenticity.