Do you know the house where Ivan Turgenev's great grandfather lived? And Fyodor Tyuchev's grandmother? Well, maybe you at least remember Gilaria Villega? But the heritage department of the city of Moscow recently delighted Muscovites with the news: in Arbat the house where these most famous figures lived at different times was restored. So what if neither Ivan Turgenev himself nor Fyodor Tyuchev ever lived here, and the house itself burned down and was completely rebuilt twice in different styles for such beauty, no expense spared!
No, it's great that something is being restored in Moscow. But the strange "selectivity" of this generosity is surprising. For some reason, the heritage department of the city of Moscow did not have enough money to save the unique three-story school of Matvey Kazakov at the corner of Bolshoi and Meli Zlatostinsky lanes. The house stood without a roof for twenty years (!) and continued to deteriorate until it was completely destroyed and reconstruction began, and only fragments of the walls of the lower floors remained. And for some reason, the service for the heritage of the city of Moscow was not concerned about the destruction of the Chizhevsky courtyard on Nikolskaya street, during which reliefs of Didio were lost on the way out, and then the legendary perfume shop of "A. Rall & Co., where he was the main perfumer.
Ernst Beau is the creator of the Chanel N5 fragrance.
And currently, there are no names that prevent officials from removing ("revealing") a huge number of city estates and historical buildings from the register - according to Arkhindzor's calculations, since 2010 Moscow has lost 379 historical buildings, and in 2025 the law did not confirm the status of one and a half thousand previously identified objects. Did the Demidov family help destroy the hospital in Semenya and start building skyscrapers on this site? Or maybe Giliarovsky's name will save Khitrovka from another skyscraper?
Of course not. In the history of Moscow monuments that have already been destroyed and are planned for demolition again, there were much more prominent names, without "grandfathers" there. But for some reason it didn't help.