“Lights of Moscow” Museum

The “Lights of Moscow” Museum is a small themed museum devoted to the history of street and domestic lighting in the capital. It occupies part of an old chamber building in Armyansky Lane, not far from Myasnitskaya Street. The exhibition traces how street lamps and lighting methods changed over nearly three centuries — from oil lamps to LED systems — and also introduces visitors to domestic lighting fixtures from different eras.

The museum grew out of a themed exhibition marking the 250th anniversary of permanent street lighting in Moscow: in 1730, by decree of Empress Anna Ioannovna, the first oil street lamps were lit, illuminating the Kremlin, Kitai-Gorod, the White City and the Zemlyanoy Gorod, and the German Quarter. The exhibition opened in December 1980 on the initiative of Yuri Kharkevich, head of the Mosgorsvet enterprise, and was organised by staff of that organisation. The material proved so extensive and so much in demand that in 1984 an independent museum was established on its basis.

The museum was housed in the Protopopov Chambers, also known as the Miloslavsky Chambers — a rare surviving example of Moscow civil architecture from the late 17th century. The white-stone building, with its thick walls and vaulted ceilings, retains the features of pre-Petrine residential architecture and is itself a historical monument. The small halls were fitted out with display cases of lighting devices, while part of the collection of everyday objects was set aside as an interactive fund, whose exhibits visitors are permitted to handle.

The museum’s collection includes archival documents and lighting-engineering drawings, photographs of street lamps from various decades, and pictorial material on the history of the city. Among the notable exhibits are a replica of the “eternal light bulb” that has been burning continuously since 1901 in the American town of Livermore, a lamp made for the coronation of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, samples of lamps by well-known manufacturers, Kremlin star lamps made by the MELZ plant in 1937, and archival photographs relating to the inventions of Pavel Yablochkov and Alexander Lodygin, whose work in electric lighting was ahead of its time.

Today the museum carries out active educational work: it runs general and themed tours of the exhibition, evening walking tours through the lanes of old Moscow with hand-held lanterns, “Lights of Moscow” bus routes, and outreach lessons for schoolchildren. In 2008 the museum was recognised for its educational programme for children with developmental disabilities, and it has since carried out the projects “Light. Dramatis Personae” and “The Lamps of Moscow.” The institution regularly takes part in the city-wide events “Museum Night” and “Biblionight,” when admission is free.

“Lights of Moscow” remains one of the few museums in the world devoted exclusively to the history of lighting, and a rare example of a technical collection combined with a 17th-century architectural monument. For Muscovites and visitors to the capital it serves as a reminder of how the urban environment has changed together with technology, while for specialists it is a source of information on the history of Russian lighting engineering.