The Matviev’s lived in that part of the city just outside the Kitai-gorod, where Alexis had settled a number of little Russians from the newly-acquired territory, the Ukraine. The Marosseika preserves the name of this settlement, and passing up it from the Lubianski Ploshchad, leaving All Saints’ church on the right, Armianski, a street on the left, will soon be reached. There, a couple of hundred yards along, on the left is the old parish church of St Nicholas, built by Mikhail Theodorovich, contiguous to the house of the Matviev’s and the Tsarista Natalia, where is now the tomb of the old voievode—a mean mausoleum, in the classic style. The church shows but few traces of western influence: it is of two storeys like most of the churches of the seventeenth century and is surrounded with a gallery, formerly open, but now glazed between the pillars. Near by is the Lazarev Institute, for the study of eastern languages, and peeping over the trees will be seen the green domes and pink belfry of the Monastery of St John Chrysostom, with five churches of which the oldest was founded by Ivan Vasilievich in 1479; the entrance is from the Zlato-ustinski pereulok. Opposite the Armianski is the Kosmo-Damianski pereulok, with the Lutheran Church founded in 1582 by the Englishman Horsey for the foreign colony.
Continuing along the Marosseika, past the Church of the Assumption (p. 89), an interesting church will be found on the right, that of the Pokrovka (Protection), and further along the same street, where it changes its name to the Basmannia, the church of Vasili Ivanovich built in 1517 and reconstructed in 1751, to which latter date its architecture belongs. Turning into the Sadovia on the left, in the Furmanni pereulok, the second on the left, will be found the oldest large house in Moscow, the residence of Prince Usupov, quite in the style of the early seventeenth century. The entrance is from the Charitonievski Boulevard, the next turning on the left. The whole of this district suffered much from the fires of past centuries and only such buildings as these isolated churches and houses in their own courtyards escaped the general conflagration. A little further along the Sadovia is the “Krasnœ Vorot” or Red Gate to mark the old tower on the outer wall. It was built as a triumphal arch for the Empress Elizabeth on her coronation, when tables spread with viands for the people reached from there to the Kremlin wall. The French made it a butt for musketry practice, using sacred ikons for a bull’s eye.
Architecture of a different type is to be found in that residential quarter of the city between the Kremlin and the Prechistenka Boulevard. Behind the Riding School is the Mokhovaia, a street to which front both Universities and the Dom Pachkov, an old mansion in which is stored the Rumiantsev art collection and museum of antiquities. The entrance is in the Vogankovski pereulok, near the Znamenka.[G] It contains:—
(a) Foreign ethnological museum.
(b) The Dashkov ethnographical collection of Slavic antiquities; life size figures of the races inhabiting Russia; in another hall of Slavic races inhabiting Austrian and other adjacent lands.
(c) Mineralogical collection.
(d) Zoological collection; includes mammoth and Muscovite and Siberian fossils.
(e) Slav and Christian antiquities, consisting mostly of early specimens of eastern iconography from Mount Athos, and archæological fragments. They are in four rooms on the upper storey, and one ikon of Mosaic is particularly interesting, as are also many of the specimens of Byzantine and Muscovite enamel and niello, including an eleventh century Gold Cross.
(f) Picture Galleries.—Copies of Flemish, Spanish, Italian and other schools, and the Pryanichnikov collection of Russian artists, of which the best are: 1-10 by Ivanov; 42, 43, Chiernakov; 65, by Repin; 157, 158, Aviazovski, and 201-203, Chedrin.
(g) Manuscripts and early printed Slav books, some very beautifully illustrated. This section is closed during July and August.