Gorky Museum

The house was designed and built 1900–03 by the architect Fyodor Schechtel for the wealthy Russian banker, industrialist and newspaper publisher Stepan Ryabouchinsky, who at the time of construction was only twenty-six years old.

His father, of peasant origin, had built an industrial empire, based on textile mills and many other businesses, and shared by his nine sons.

Contemporary Russian critics praised Schechtel's design for its "boldness" and "courage," although they noted that the massive entrance porch and large windows on the first floor were inconvenient and illogical.

The design of the house and interior is a blend of the 'Style Moderne', the Russian term for Art Nouveau, and elements of the symbolist movement of the end of the 19th century.

and the small narrow windows on the right upper floor resembled those of a "terem", a medieval style of Russian residence.

The elaborate wrought ironwork and colorful ceramic decoration were both Art Nouveau and a recollection of medieval Moscow palaces.

The wrought iron decoration on the facade also had a marine theme, resembling fish scales, while the design on the mahogany front door had lotus ornaments made of brass.

[4] In addition, the facade was decorated with glazed hollow bricks, a backdrop for iron railings and large windows with wooden mullions.

The stairway is lit by both natural light from above, and through three vertical panels of stained glass that rise with the height of the building.

The setting is highly theatrical; the sea-bottom effect had been introduced in Moscow in 1896 in the stage design for the opera Sadko by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in a scene in which the hero descends to the bottom of the sea, to the realm of the Sea King, and returns to the surface with enormous wealth.

The original centrepiece of the room was a carved white mantle with an image of a large dragonfly, which disappeared after the Revolution.

The furniture objects date to the 1930s, to the period of residence of Maxim Gorky, but the distinctive decorative elements on the walls and ceiling remain.

The interior of the writer's private apartments reflects the decorative taste of the 1930s, when Gorky lived there, since most of the Art Nouveau furniture of the Riabouchinksi family had disappeared in the revolutionary turmoil.