🏛 Zinaida Morozova's Mansion

ул. Спиридоновка, 17

A Shekhtel mansion of 1893 in the Neo-Gothic style with turrets and pointed windows.

Shekhtel was expelled from school for skipping classes, and for this commission he took his exams as an external student; formally Ivan Kuznetsov supervised the construction.
More than 600 drawings were made for the house, and the interiors were designed by the then little-known Mikhail Vrubel.
Savva Morozov hid the revolutionary Nikolai Bauman from the police here, and Bauman slept in the billiard room.
In the 1920s a collection of Mikhail Ryabushinsky was found in a hiding place behind a cabinet: paintings by Serov, Vrubel, Repin and a bust by Rodin.
Since 1938 it has been the Foreign Ministry's Reception House; in 1943 the Moscow Declaration of the USSR, USA and Great Britain was signed in the mansion.
A fire in August 1995 destroyed 70% of the decor, and the interiors were restored from Shekhtel's photographs and drawings.