Chocolate House (a branch of the Kiev Museum of Russian Art) 
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Photo1. Chocolate House Facade |
Photo2. Interior of Chocolate House decorated in the New Russian style |
Photo3. Interior of Chocolate House decorated in Art Nouveau style |
Address: 17, Shovkovychna Street, Kiev
Tel: +38(044) 253-05-21.
Opening hours: 11.00 - 17.00
Closed: on Monday and Thursday
Chocolate House is a two-storey high building. It was built in the style of the Venetian Renaissance by the order of Kiev merchant Semen Semenovich Mogilevtsev (1846-1917). The mansion was constructed by the famous architect Vladimir Nikolayev in 1890s. Chocolate House is one of the most mysterious mansions in our city. The building has been colored in the unusual way. The predominance of brown color gives the possibility to name the mansion as Chocolate House. Its story is similar to the story about the Gorodetsky’s House with Chimeras. No common people had been allowed to visit Chocolate House for fifteen years. In Soviet times the Central Civil Registration Office was situated there. Then a new Shcherbitsky’s residence was constructed nearby and an abundance of festive people seemed to impede the work of statesmen of Soviet Ukraine. Therefore money was found to build a new Palace of Marriages near Povitroflotsky overpass. The new Palace of Marriages was immediately nicknamed the "Bermuda Triangle" in Kiev. In 1986 the Children's Picture Gallery was located there.
In 2009 the building was handed over to the Kiev Museum of Russian Art management. The restoration has been started. The walls, stucco, parquet have been restored. You will be amazed with unusual murals and wooden inlay. There are windows with stained glass. Each room is decorated in its specific style. You will be amazed with French, Byzantine, Eastern, Art Noveau and Renaissance styles of decoration. Meanwhile the visitors are allowed only to three restored rooms. They are White Room, New Russian Room and Art Noveau Room. You can see the paintings by children on winter and Christmas there.
When the restoration is finished there will be a picture gallery, a children's aesthetic education school and the Museum of Private Collections in the Chocolate House. There are plans to make One Painting Museum there too. The idea is to bring some famous work of art to Kiev and let local lovers of art see it without necessity to go abroad in order see the masterpieces of arts. Thematic debates will be organized and movies will be shown there too.
