Museum of the Patriotic War of 1812

The Museum of the Patriotic War of 1812 is a branch of the State Historical Museum dedicated to the events of the war against Napoleon and the foreign campaigns of the Russian army. It occupies a specially built pavilion in the courtyard of the former Moscow City Duma building and holds more than two thousand authentic items from the era — weapons, awards, documents and works of art.

The idea of preserving the memory of the war arose even while the fighting was still underway: according to legend, Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov asked a landowner acquaintance to keep items for a future museum while Russian troops had not yet reached Paris. The first memorial site was the monument to the heroes on the Borodino Field, unveiled in 1839, followed by the philanthropist Emmanuil Naryshkin's donation to the city of the hut in Fili where the famous council of war had been held. In 1903 a small exhibition opened at Borodino station, and five years later, on the instructions of Nicholas II, a special committee was set up to organize a full-fledged museum in the capital, headed by Colonel Vladimir Afanasyev.

By 1912, the centenary of the war, nine exhibition halls with weapons, paintings by Vasily Vereshchagin and the collection of Alexei Bakhrushin were opened within the halls of the Historical Museum — these materials were intended as the basis for a future stand-alone building, for whose construction about two hundred thousand rubles had already been raised. However, the First World War and the 1917 Revolution halted the realization of the project, and the collected materials were dispersed among various repositories, most of them later returning to the collections of the State Historical Museum.

The museum's modern history began in 2009 with a government order for the construction of a separate building. To a design by architect Pavel Andreyev, a two-story pavilion of about 1,800 square meters was erected in the inner courtyard of the old City Duma, on piles twelve meters deep, so that the new structure would not affect the historic walls on Red Square. The grand opening took place on September 4, 2012, marking the 200th anniversary of the start of the war, in the presence of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The exhibition is arranged chronologically and tells the story of the pre-war decade, the course of the campaign, and the first post-war years in Europe. Among the most valuable exhibits are Napoleon's saber, said by legend to have been given to Count Pavel Shuvalov for saving the emperor from enraged French peasants, as well as the samovar of commander Mikhail Kutuzov and a portrait gallery by George Dawe. At the entrance is displayed a rescued mural by Genrikh Siemiradzki, which once adorned the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, demolished in the 1930s.

Today the museum remains one of the key centers for studying the era of the Napoleonic Wars in Russia, combining authentic rarities with modern multimedia display technology and remaining an important part of the museum complex on Red Square.