The house where Petr Alekseevich Kropotkin was born in 1842

The inconspicuous Kropotkinsky Lane stretching parallel to the Garden Ring from Bolshoy Levshinsky Lane to Ostozhenka Street is almost lost in the maze of Arbat narrow streets. The lane (previously called Shtatny) was named after Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921), a famous geographer, traveler and theoretician of anarchist doctrine.

Surrounded by Soviet-era buildings, Kropotkinsky Lane nevertheless boasts several gems of old Moscow architecture. One of them is an old one-story mansion of light yellow color with the number 26. The house dates back to the early 19th century, when the plot belonged to Pyotr’s grandmother, Princess Gagarina. A one-story wooden building commissioned by her was erected in 1817 in a classic Moscow style of that time. The main façade was decorated with 12 high narrowed windows and a main entrance, with an extended pediment in front of it, resting on six wooden Ionic columns.

Two decades later, the estate became the property of Ekaterina Sulima, the daughter of the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, Nikolai Sulima, and the wife of Alexei Kropotkin, a member of an old princely family. Soon the mansion got a stone foundation, mezzanines and two extensions.

On November 27 (December 9 by the old calendar), 1842, the couple had a son, Pyotr, but he did not live there long: his mother died when the boy was three and a half years old, and his father decided to sell the mansion.

Over the next eight decades, the house changed owners until the building was nationalized in the late 1910s. After the death of Pyotr Kropotkin in February 1921, the Soviet Government decided to commemorate him: Shtatny Lane was named after the anarchist and the mansion got a memorial plaque made by the sculptor Sergei Merkurov,

On December 9, 1923, the house with the current number 26 was reopened as the Kropotkin Museum. Many followers and admirers of the anarchist teachings of Pyotr Kropotkin donated money for its foundation: George Bernard Shaw, Herbert George Wells and many others. By 1928, the institution included an extensive exhibition, a library and a recreated London office of Pyotr Alekseevich.

In the second half of the 1930s, the building was under the jurisdiction of the USSR Government, and in 1939, the museum was finally closed. Since 1972, the Kropotkin mansion has housed diplomatic missions.

Restoration (2010)

In the mid-2000s, GlavUpDK carried out a complex restoration of the building to recreate its historical characteristics. During the restoration work, dilapidated wooden roof and roof structures were replaced, the water collection and heating systems were renovated, the façades were painted.

The plaster moldings in the reception room was restored and the plaster finish on the ceilings was replaced. Specialists managed to restore the door blocks of the first floor using surviving samples, and the front area of the interior acquired a holistic, ceremonial character.

The mansion is a regional cultural heritage site.