Andrei Bely Memorial Apartment

About museum

The memorial apartment of Andrei Bely is located in house No. 55 on the Arbat in Moscow, where he was born on October 14, 1880. The house was built before the fire of 1812 and was an old manor house designed by the architect Arsenyev. It was intended for professors of Moscow University, and the father of Boris Nikolaevich Bugayev received apartment No. 7. Boris graduated from the university and, thanks to living next to the family of Mikhail Sergeevich Solovyov, a friendship developed with Valery Bryusov, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, Zinaida Gippius and the older Symbolists. It was here that the poet's pseudonym — 'Andrei Bely' — appeared. The Solovyov family helped him publish his first book, and in 1906 Bely left the house after the death of his father and his first love. In the 1930s the house was converted into communal apartments, and then in 1987 apartment No. 7 was transferred to the literary museum, where in 2000 the Andrei Bely Museum was opened. The apartment houses an exhibition about the poet's youth, as well as all the drafts and notes of his epic 'My Life'.