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This is one of the most interesting, spiritual, creative and original museums in Kiev. It is the most “Kiev” museum dedicated to the most “Kiev” street, besides the first private museum in Ukraine and also the nominee of the European Museum Forum of 2002. This is the only museum n the Continent, devoted to one street. That`s what the one street museum is like – a huge antique store, full of city stories and legends, clearly demonstrating everyday life of the past epochs up to 1970th.
It’s a gallery of wonderful people and wonderful buildings: St.Andrew`s Church, Richard`s House, The Bulgakovs` House. The exposition tells us about V. Nekrasov and G. Tyutyunnik, philologist P. Zhitetskiy, orientalist T.Kezma, about artists F.Krasitskiy, G. Dyadchenko and I. Makushenko, sculpture F. Balavenkiy, writer of political essays V. Savenko, bandmaster A. Koshitsa, doctor F. Yanovkiy, archeologist and historian A. Muravyev and K. Lokhvitskiy.
Here we can find out where exactly on Andrew’s Descent the Pronya Prokopivna` s dwelling was and what secrets Richard`s Castle keeps.
The Museum was opened in 1991. According to its organizers, the basis of its composition forms maximum approach of the street’s and the city’s history to the history of personality. We face the museum of everyday life, land of routine things: umbrellas, dishes, dresses and tailcoats, uniforms and portraits, pillows and pince-nez of the epoch distant from us by only four or five generations, but that has already become mythical and mythologized.
The world of home and handicraft, service and occupation, the theatre and disorderly house, the interior of a doctor’s cabinet and a confectioner’s store - there is no need to watch films o read about those days if you can see everything with your own eyes.
The outer windows of the museum, its hall’s interior start the exposition. Here a Podol tailor does his work, a girl prepares to perform a popular love song and the costume’s orderer reads his newspaper peacefully. A cab carries from the wall right on us, a yard cleaner invariably sweeps out the yard exactly on visitors, a lady with her cavalier walk by the lobby window and it is hard to realize if you are already in the museum or on the street yet. On upper shelves of an old Kiev flat there are thousands of things forgotten by our grandmothers and grandfathers, but not just them: someone put aurochs ` skull here, someone – ancient Greek amphora.
The mirror opens the door to the world behind the mirror and me move 100 years earlier, can hear those years` music and dissolve in the atmosphere of the Descent, in the aura of the old city, when according to Bulgakov, “young careless generation lived in it”
And Time River runs further, winding round Museum halls – now we are in the anxious 1930th, menacing 1940, thawing 1960, which was not so long ago, our parent` childhood and youth, but already museum, rarity, rare, cute and a little strange.
And again show windows present photos, belongings, stories about Gregory Tyutyunnik and Victor Nekrasov, about the unforgettable communal life of half a century old.
Without visiting the Museum, you can hardly feel the city’s soul. In order to understand Kiev, to love it and let it into your soul, visit Andrew’s Descent 2.