Moscow State Oriental Museum

About

In its earliest days, this building was a house built in a corner of a city that had lost its childhood. Over time, a great collection of Islamic art, East Asian ceramics, and Caucasian handicrafts accumulated, and it has now become a space where different civilizations come together in harmony like stars embroidered across a night sky. The great ceiling-high patterned ornamentation seems to watch over the souls of its inhabitants, and the harmony of wood and gold appears to endure forever, undiminished by time. In the Islamic art gallery, light flows along the surface of the ceramics, while in the East Asian gallery, Islamic scenery seeps subtly into the landscape paintings. Visitors brush their fingertips along the edges of the paintings, feeling as though they are living in another era.