The prolific and esteemed Russian playwright and master of the modern tale, Anton Chekhov, lived in the two pink flats at Ulitsa Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya with his family between the fall of 1886 and the spring of 1890. Born in 1860 into a serf family in Taganrog, Chekhov experienced a difficult and poor childhood.
Having gone bankrupt, Chekhov moved to Moscow with the family to make a fresh start. Chekhov joined his family in 1879 and enrolled at the Moscow State University Medical Faculty, graduating 5 years later. Having become a practicing physician, Chekhov supported the rest of his family through freelance income as a journalist and comic sketch writer.
By 1888 he had become very popular among the lower classes as a short story writer for comedy magazines and in the process had become the short comic plaything of about 1.000 words into a minor art form.
However, Chekhov experimented more and more with serious writing and gradually his works took on a more mature appearance. For the next few years, the author concentrated exclusively on short stories, always in a realistic style, serious in conception, but with an underlying touch of humor.
Chekhov wrote hundreds of short stories before turning his hand for the stage and creating some of Russia's most beloved and most frequently preformed plays - "Uncle Vanya", "Three Sisters" and "The Seagull". The writer also lived and wrote in Melikhovo, south of the capital, and in Yalta, on the Crimean coast.
The house-museum was perhaps the site of Chekhov's most fruitful artistic period. Not only did the writer balance a working medical practice and a notoriously active social life, but while residing in the house he wrote his first work "Ivanov", 3 of a sainetes and more than 100 short stories.
Visitors have the opportunity to see Chekhov's study and consultation room, his modest room and that of his brother, student, and the contrastingly ornate family room. Much of the room is now dedicated to an exhibition of original theater posters and first editions of Chekhov's plays. The museum has regular thematic excursions and lectures on the author and his literary work.
Direction: Ulitsa Sadovaya-Kudrinskaya 6, Moscow.