«The potential of the Historical Museum
is not yet fully discovered by foreign and domestic tourists», - said the
museum's Director Alexey Levikin at a meeting with tour operators, receiving
Russian and foreign tourists in the capital. A Day in the Historical
Museum which was held last Friday is
the first in the cycle of seminars and presentations, organized by Moscow City Committee
on Tourism and Hotel Industry, the State
Historical Museum,
the GUM trading house and the Russian Union of Travel Industry.
According to the museum’s director, the
seminar is, first of all, aimed at creating partner relationship with travel
agents and actually improving of museum’s work. Its administration is ready to
listen to any remarks if they conduct to positive changes. «We want such
meetings with the travel industry to become regular, and our dialogues to be
constructive», - assured Mr. Levikin.
The importance of such dialogues was also
confirmed by the vice-president of Moscow City Committee for Tourism and Hotel
Industry George Mokhov: “We pay a lot of attention to practical issues of
cooperation between travel industry and the city's museums; we know their
problems and achievements”. To his mind such cooperation is impossible without
specialists who can show Moscow
perfectly and attract tourists to the capital. It depends on the receiving
companies how guests will see the city and what impression they will have,
especially now, when the information spreads immediately through the internet.
Alexey Levikin reminded us what
"rich material" the Historical
Museum has to offer.
Except for the building and the collections, it’s also the famous Pokrovsky
Cathedral which last year celebrated its 450th birthday, and chambers
of boyars Romanovs in Zaryadye. By 2013, when the 400th anniversary of the House
of Romanov will be celebrated, the museum is planning to expand not only the
exposition, but also the territory of the mansion.
Mr. Levikin also reported that the area
of the Historical Museum will be expanded by means of the first floor
of the former Lenin
Museum, which nowadays is
another subsidiary. In the end of June a new hall on one thousand sq. m will be
opened with the exposition “Germans and Russians: one thousand years together”.
Another important event Alexey Levikin considers to be the creation of the Museum
of 1812, which will be opened in September replacing Lenin’s Museum. He
stressed that for now the old prices will be kept but when the new grounds are
opened, there will be a single ticket, which will allow to visit all
expositional parts of State
Historical Museum.
The Director of the Historical Museum
admitted that the main problem of attracting large amount of tourists is the
infrastructure inconvenient for foreign visitors: “Our foreign guests got used
to going to a restaurant right after spending two or three hours in a museum.
That’s why we’re now establishing closer relations with our partners from the
GUM trading house”.
The head of GUM's food production
facility Vladimir Rudenko explained that since 2007 there have been ten food
spots at the mall, the most popular of which is the Dining Room No. 57. styled
as the legendary Soviet Book of Delicious and Healthy Food of 1957. It caters
to about 2000 guests every day, average bill is 300 roubles (€8). Cafe
Festivalnoe known for its bright colorful umbrellas features several pavilions
offering international food: “Italy”,
“Pancakes”, “Asia”, “Japan”
and others. Mr. Rudenko specified that by preliminary application travel agents
can reserve places for excursion groups, and if it is required, even in a
separate zone.
To realize what the Historical Museum
has to offer, the Deputy Director on Cultural and Educational Activity Irina
Alekseeva compared its collection to World's largest museums. It turned out that in
terms of the number of units in storage (5 million) the State Historical Museum
places second after the British Museum (13 million, including library). On the
third place is the New York Metropolitan Museum
(3 million), the quintuple is closed by the Paris's Louvre and the Madrid Prado (2
million each).
“In 1986 the Historical Museum
was closed for major repairing and restoration and resumed its work only in the
mid 2000s. Before the closing we had about 30% of foreign visitors, now we have
only 7%, it’s almost nothing, it's like we were forgotten”, - complains Mrs.
Alekseeva. As the result of restoration all the halls were decorated in
compliance with the concept of the author, Vladimir Sherwood, which means in
style of the epochs they represent. The Imperial and Orthodox symbolics, lost
during the Soviet period, was finally restored. In February 2012 the Historical Museum celebrated its 140th anniversary.
Now, after the huge restoration works in
all the museum's subsidiaries, its administration is ready to show its
"goods", so to say, to the best advantage. The main plots of
excursion programs for foreign and Russian tourists in the main building,
Pokrovsky Cathedral and Chambers of the boyars Romanovs in Zaryadye were introduced
to the travel industry.
