Mikhail Prishvin House Museum

Moscow Oblast
Dunino village, 2, Moscow region
Phones: +7 495 695-53-08
Web site: https://www.goslitmuz.ru/museums/dom-muzey-m-m-prishvina/

Nature is the main muse of Mikhail Mikhailovich Prishvin's creativity. Therefore, it is not surprising that the writer's museum is located not in a noisy city, but in a forest on the picturesque bank of the Moskva River, fifty kilometers from the capital. The house, built at the end of the XIX century, is unusual for that time.

It is known that its first owner was a native of Finland, Maria Oswald, and therefore the motifs of the northern architectural style organically fit into the appearance of the estate near Moscow: an open seven-sided veranda with a conical roof, rich carvings of platbands, a high foundation. After the war, Mikhail Prishvin bought the "ruins of a beautiful house" and gradually restored it.
The manor still retains a lively and warm atmosphere, as if the owner of the house has just left, having missed the guests for a minute. In the office there is Prishvin's personal library, a camera with which the writer did not part during his campaigns, and a hunting rifle on the wall. From its Windows offer views of the fields beyond the river and spruce alley.
In the morning, Prishvin preferred to work in the dining room rather than in the office. It contains Prishvin's most cherished lines — his famous "Diary", which covered the history of Russian life for almost fifty years. "I write my diary when all Goryunov still asleep". A multi-volume edition of the writer's diary has been prepared for publication by the museum staff.
The dining room is the largest and brightest room in the house. Over tea, long conversations were held here, because Prishvin was visited by a variety of people — academician P. L. Kapitsa, conductor E. A. Mravinsky, pianist M. V. Yudina and, of course, neighbors-summer residents.
On warm summer evenings, these conversations took place on the veranda. Raised on high pillars (the house is built on a slope), the veranda is a real decoration of the house. It offers a beautiful view of the apple orchard, flower beds and century-old fir.

The museum's exposition presents the living environment of Mikhail Prishvin's summer dacha: a dining room, an office, a room of the writer's wife and a veranda; the greatest interest is the writer's library, his personal belongings, hunting and photographic accessories, and a Moskvich-400 car. The estate has preserved lime and spruce alleys with ancient trees, a clearing, an apple orchard, rose hips, jasmine, lilacs, flower beds.

The first owner of the house, built at the end of the XIX century, was a native of Finland, Maria Oswald. In 1901, the house was bought by the Cretan family, associated with well-known public and cultural figures of Russia: in the 1920s and 30s, it was visited by Narodovoltsy V. N. Figner and academician A. N. Bach, friends of Leo Tolstoy: the publisher of the people's library "Intermediary" I. I. Gorbunov-Posadov and doctor D. V. Nikitin; sculptors S. T. Konenkov and A. S. Golubkina, artist P. P. Konchalovsky. During the Great Patriotic War, the house was a hospital. Mikhail Prishvin purchased the estate in 1946.

Mikhail Prishvin House Museum excursions can be called philosophical journeys. "Creativity is creativity of the house of immortality", — says Prishvin and his house is about a writer's quest of the high love of its inhabitants, about the courage of the writer has not had opportunity to fully reveal itself to the reader.

Prishvin dreamed of introducing photographs into the text of his works and explained this by the need to " create little by little an artistic form that is most flexible for depicting the current moment of life." In the exhibition you can see photos of Prishvin's work, cameras, a magnifier, tanks for developing film and scales for chemicals.