Russian Museum

Listen first. Behind you, the traffic of Nevsky Prospekt fades into a low hum. In front of you, gravel crunches underfoot across a quiet square. A tall iron fence rises ahead, black with touches of gold. Beyond it stands a long yellow palace with white columns, a little like a stage set waiting for its actors. This is the Mikhailovsky Palace. Today it is the main home of the State Russian Museum, the first state museum in the country dedicated entirely to Russian art.

The palace came first and the museum came much later. In the early nineteenth century, the architect Carlo Rossi designed this building for Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich. He was the youngest son of Emperor Paul the First. Construction ran from 1819 to 1825. Rossi was an Italian-born architect who grew up in Russia. He thought beyond single buildings. He designed whole ensembles at once, with the palace, the square, the streets and the garden all planned together.

That is why the space in front of you feels so complete. The square is now called Arts Square. Rossi planned it as a formal approach to the palace. Look around and you will see theatres and concert halls along its edges. In the centre stands a bronze statue of the poet Alexander Pushkin. He stands with one arm stretched out, as if he is reciting to the crowd. The statue was added in the 1950s, long after Rossi's time.

Here is something many visitors miss. This palace was not always a quiet place of paintings. After the Grand Duke died, his widow, Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, kept the house alive with music and conversation. She was a serious patron of the arts and of reform. Musicians, scientists and statesmen gathered in these rooms. So the building had a role in Russian culture long before it held a single museum label.

The museum itself came from an emperor's wish. Alexander the Third wanted a national collection of Russian art in the capital. He died before the plan was complete. His son, Nicholas the Second, signed the decree in 1895. The museum opened to the public in 1898, and it carried Alexander the Third's name. The state bought the palace for this purpose, and the old residence became a public gallery.

As you go inside, take a moment on the main staircase. It is one of the places where Rossi's original design survives most clearly. The staircase rises in a wide, bright sweep between columns. Upstairs, the White Hall keeps much of its early nineteenth century decoration. There is gilded carving, painted panels, and furniture made to match the walls. Here you are walking through the palace as a guest might once have seen it.

The collection is enormous. It runs from medieval icons to the experiments of the twentieth century. The early rooms hold icons — religious images painted on wooden panels with egg-based paint and gold leaf. Many come from old centres such as Novgorod and Pskov. Look at the faces closely. They are long and calm, with large eyes. The painters were not trying to show real people. They were trying to show something beyond the everyday world.

Then the mood changes completely. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Russian painters trained in the European academic style. One of the best-known results hangs here: Karl Bryullov's The Last Day of Pompeii. It shows the ancient Roman city as the volcano Vesuvius destroys it. The canvas is huge. People fall, run and shelter their children under a red, burning sky. When it was first shown, it made Bryullov a celebrity across Europe.

Not far away, the sea takes over. Ivan Aivazovsky painted waves for most of his long life. His painting The Ninth Wave shows survivors clinging to a broken mast after a storm. The title comes from an old sailors' belief. Legend has it that waves grow stronger in a pattern, and the ninth is the most dangerous. Notice the light. A gold and green sunrise shines through the water itself, so the wave seems almost transparent.

Ilya Repin is another giant of these halls. His painting of the Zaporozhian Cossacks shows a group of Cossack warriors writing a rude reply to the Ottoman sultan. Watch their faces. Almost every man is laughing, but each one laughs in a different way. Repin also led the work on a vast group portrait of the State Council, the imperial advisory body. It is one of the largest canvases in the museum, filled with officials in gold-trimmed uniforms.

For the twentieth century, you will need to walk into the Benois Wing. This extension was added to the palace in the early twentieth century. It was designed by the architect Leonty Benois. Here the collection turns toward the avant-garde, the radical artists who broke with tradition. The museum holds one of the versions of Kazimir Malevich's Black Square. It is a simple black shape on a white ground. For many people, it still marks the moment painting started over.

The Mikhailovsky Palace is only the centre of a larger family. The museum also manages several other historic buildings in the city. These include the Marble Palace, the Stroganov Palace, and the Mikhailovsky Castle, a sharp-edged red fortress-palace nearby. It also cares for the Summer Garden, with its old trees and marble statues. Behind the main palace lies the Mikhailovsky Garden. It is a calm green space where you can rest between galleries.

When you come back out, pause at the gate again. Turn and look at the long yellow front once more. The columns throw thin shadows across the wall, and those shadows move as the light changes. Pushkin still stretches out his arm toward you. The noise of Nevsky Prospekt waits just beyond the square. For a few more steps, though, you are still inside Rossi's plan — one palace, one square, and centuries of Russian art behind those windows.