JOST A MON

This is an excellent example of eccentricity in Moscow, which is always good to show visitors to the capital: a house decorated with bas-reliefs of great Russian writers cavorting with various women. Conventional wisdom is that in pre-revolutionary times there was a brothel at this location, and that the bas-reliefs immortalise its VIP clients - Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and others. In actual fact, this is a sculptural composition of Parnassus by Sinayev-Bernstein ('ancient muses embracing great writers, artists, scientists, and so on'), which was to form a frieze in the Museum of Fine Arts in Volkhonka. The director of the museum refused the composition, and so Sinayev-Bernstein, in his grief, gave it to a certain Mr Broido to decorate his private home in one of the lanes of Arbat. The frieze had to be chopped into parts so as to fit between the windows. To be fair, local historians do not believe 100% in this version of the story either, so you can make up what you will. The figures, unfortunately, are very fragile and soon there may not be much left to see.

Address: Plotnikov pereulok, Number 4/5.

[Translated from Bolshoi Gorod's guide to Moscow; crossposted at Tangentialia.]