Free admittance and extended hours await visitors to Moscow’s museums on Sunday as part of Moscow’s 10th-annual celebration of Historical and Cultural Heritage Day.
More than 300 museums, exhibition halls and galleries will take part in the celebration, with free admission, as well as special lectures, excursions and other events. The number is up from last year, when 283 cultural institutions took part.
Worldwide, people celebrate April 18 as the International Day for Monuments and Sites. The holiday was approved by UNESCO in 1983. It aims to raise awareness of the diversity of the world’s cultural heritage and to draw attention to its vulnerability.
Similar events will take place in Moscow again on May 18, which is International Museum Day.
“We expect that cultural institutions will be visited on these days by 100,000 to 150,000 more visitors than last year, when 1.2 million people participated in the Historical and Cultural Heritage Days,” First Deputy Mayor Lyudmila Shvetsova said, Interfax reported earlier this month.
Last year’s event was very successful, but many visitors also complained of long lines at many places.
Among museums with free admission on Sunday are the Moscow Historical Museum on Red Square, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, as well as the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture, the Bulgakov Museum and the Mayakovsky Museum. Admission to the current Picasso exhibition at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts will still, however, require a fee.
Special events and lectures will take place in many of the museums. The Mayakovsky Museum will host a free performance of fragments from the legendary author’s play “The Bathhouse” at 6 p.m. and a poetry reading at 6:30 p.m., among other events.
Entrance to the Kremlin Palace will be free as well. Additionally, 33 foreign embassies located in buildings considered significant to cultural heritage will open their doors to visitors. These include the embassies of Belgium, Iceland, Egypt, Cambodia and Greece.
For an informational map of the participating institutions, log on to http://18.yandex.ru. The schedule is also available on www.mosdepkultura.ru