The arena rang with cacophony in Zvenigorod

Remember the comical sketch that a very young humorist Khazanov begins like this: “I bought a new radio, well-designed, one might even say beautiful, but I have the impression that they made it at the end of the month …”? Further, he demonstrates how the miracle of technology works, independently switching from one station to another: “Once, Little Red Riding Hood’s mother baked delicious pies … that can withstand pressure up to 50 atmospheres, they can drive piles …” Approximately the same effect remains from visiting the Zvenigorod Manege, a constant the exposition of which was also made according to the latest technology and museum ideas – and, it seems, also in a hurry. Expensive, rich, bright, but the feeling that at the very last moment.

The renovation is called a restoration, and indeed, under the fresh paint, open historical arches are guessed. Although, of course, much here is new and modern, so the wording “reconstruction with elements of restoration” would probably be more appropriate. The renovated Manege shines with fresh light yellow paint to match the new residential complex located right behind it. Although in the preliminary project of the “restoration” it was planned to paint the Manege in light red, that is, to make it approximately the same as it was in Soviet times, when a cinema was located here. It is not clear why they decided to replay.

At the entrance to the Manege, he meets a technological quest, and it is slightly “buggy”. Before us is a screen with an interactive map of the city, you need to stand in front of it on the circle marked on the floor and move your hands to select a point of interest – for example, the Assumption Cathedral or the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery. However, the program hardly feels the movements of the body – cursor control turns into tedious gymnastics. The results of the activity, however, are not impressive: information about buildings is rather scarce. Let’s say we choose Chekhov’s house, where the writer lived while he worked as a doctor in Zvenigorod, but there are no details – only a dry date of construction (XIX century).

“Recharged” with fragments of history, we go to the wardrobe. The nook is equipped with one chair, so there is nowhere to put your things to undress and dress. But you can leave the backpack in the storage room; however, as it turns out, the key to any of the booths fits each. An unexpected approach! To the left of the wardrobe is a cafe, to the right is a long table where you can just sit and relax, and behind a glass partition there is a bookstore, which, however, is not yet open.

Next – the main thing: a permanent exhibition, created for some reason not listed in the description by Evgeny Gudov’s company. Evgeniy Valeryevich (the son of a prominent businessman, one of the leading suppliers of office furniture in Russia) is known to many for the planetarium project in St. Petersburg, which is called “the largest in the world.” There are interesting reports about him on the Web. The opening of an ambitious project on the Obvodny Canal turned into a serious scandal: on November 4, 2017, holders of pre-purchased tickets were not allowed into the planetarium, and local journalists vividly described the scene as the day before, the then governor of St. Petersburg Georgy Poltavchenko praised the project, looking at a giant hole in the unfinished dome. Looking ahead, let’s say that there are also holes in the Zvenigorod Manege.

The multimedia exposition begins, which should be viewed with an audio guide, for health, but ends for peace. The voice in the headphones, as if from a school textbook, tells the story of the ancient city. In order for the audio guide to switch from chapter to chapter, you need to bring it to the icons that resemble Wi-Fi, only looking sideways. True, the system is buggy here too: either it switches without telling it to the end, or it refuses to speak. The content of the exposition leaves questions, and the visual content does not always correspond to the text. The creation of the exhibition was based on the principle of a new model of a local history museum, where real artifacts are combined with technical “stuffing”. And at first everything seems to be in order: here are the stone tools of the Mesolithic or Neolithic era, and in the background is a story about when people began to settle here. Here are the birch trees illuminated with green light – for the entourage, but here is the layout of the town around the Assumption Cathedral. But from this chapter strange things begin to appear.

For example, opposite the layout of the Zvenigorod Kremlin, another layout is presented – the Cathedral of the Assumption. The same temple looks different. At the same time, there is no indication of the period from which the different “casts” of the Assumption Cathedral on Gorodok were made. Further, it is just about him – the pearl of Zvenigorod, for which tourists go in the hope of seeing Rublev’s frescoes.

Not everyone is aware that five years ago the Tretyakov Gallery published a book-research “Zvenigorod rank”, where the authorship of the famous icon painter is questioned and the story of how the myth of Rublev was created in Zvenigorod is described. Among the creators of the legend is Igor Grabar, on whose initiative the All-Russian Commission for the Preservation and Disclosure of Monuments of Old Russian Painting was organized in 1918. In the 1920s, when the Zvenigorod rank – three icons depicting the Savior, the Archangel Michael and the Apostle Paul – was already in the Tretyakov Gallery, it was he who suggested that their author was Andrei Rublev. The latest research by art historians suggests that the author may be another great master, whose name history has not preserved for posterity. In Soviet times, when religion was replaced by ideology, art historians went to great lengths to save ancient icons from destruction, and it was convenient to attribute other monuments to the author of the Trinity. No one doubts that the Zvenigorod rank is a great work of a painter of the past, the only question is which one. In a word, there is a discussion about this. But not in the Zvenigorod Manege. Here, for some reason, the most “tasty” topic for tourists and specialists is hushed up. Rublev’s name is not mentioned at all. At the same time, on the screen depicting the iconostasis of the Assumption Cathedral, images that are attributed to it flicker. There is a lot of text in the headphones, but little sense. Well, isn’t it strange?

The next chapter is devoted to the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery, founded at the end of the 14th century, which gained its greatest strength under Alexei Mikhailovich in the 17th century (his residence was preserved on the territory). And it seems that we have a beautiful interactive picture and a model of a huge monastery bell, restored from one preserved piece, but it is becoming more and more difficult to parse the information. Beginning with the section on the 18th and 19th centuries, even the most attentive spectator-listener begins to ring in the ears from the cacophony of the text, suddenly replaced by music, and constantly moving pictures. “It seems that the author of the exposition at that moment realized that it was necessary to turn in the work yesterday, and accelerated sharply,” one of the visitors told me, swaying a little from such a rich “cat concert”. And it’s true: the history of two centuries is squeezed into one big screen, where pictures, dates and events change at breakneck speed. Real artifacts, among which there are also unreal ones (printouts of portraits of kings and famous people from the Internet), pale against the background of multimedia noise. Here the exhibition begins to resemble Khazanov’s radio monologue…

From here, stunned visitors enter the literary green living room, where you can take a breath, sitting down at the table. Dinner has already been served on it – on plates and a tablecloth all sorts of images are vainly flickering: from Chekhov’s dinner to the paintings that his friend Levitan painted here. Photo portraits of cultural figures who left their mark in Zvenigorod are placed in wooden architraves – we look at them as if from the window of a country house. And it seems that the composer Sergei Taneyev, the artist Maria Yakunchikova and the writer Anton Chekhov lived in it all together. Although, in fact, the Vvedenskoye estate, native to Yakunchikova, and the Crimson Ravine, near which Chekhov lived, are not so close. It asks for a map of the area and a little common sense …

After the green living room, there is a section on the Great Patriotic War, where not only screens flicker, but also the floor, which is either covered with front-line letters, or turns into a living map of hostilities. And one of the most curious time periods – the post-war period, when Tarkovsky filmed Solaris in the vicinity of Zvenigorod and when the “bird treasure” was found (a hiding place of birds, where they brought scraps of documents, candy wrappers, student notebooks of the past) – completely fails in consciousness . The brain already refuses to digest the multimedia mess of events and images. And here the absence of some historical exhibits in the square recesses prepared for them in the wall is striking.

After this local “black square”, a global one awaits us: in the final section, viewers find themselves in a dark hall, which suddenly comes to life and is filled with photographs of all the famous people in a row who have ever been related to Zvenigorod and its environs. And there are many. Black and white photographs look like tombstones. Yes, and here you feel like in Dante’s purgatory.

But this Zvenigorod circle is not the last. After such a glow of “everything at once” you can sit down in the very last spacious hall. In its center is a model of the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery. Around the model there is a huge arc-shaped screen, which first broadcasts peaceful meadows and forests, for which Zvenigorod was once nicknamed “Russian Switzerland” (now, however, all of them have already been built up). However, as soon as you breathe a sigh of relief, views of the Prishvin house in Dugin pop up on the screen, rapidly changing photos of Andrei Tarkovsky at an unknown dacha … And everything again falls into a heap.

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The arena in Zvenigorod is a demonstration project. Approximately according to the same principle, it is planned to rebuild all the local history museums of the country. The program for the renovation of regional museums, which the Ministry of Culture has been developing for the past few years, has just been completed, and they promised to allocate about two billion rubles for it. It is clear that museums must be updated and keep up with the times. But everything needs balance. Amid such interactive turmoil, as in the Zvenigorod Manege, you involuntarily begin to miss the Soviet temples of art.

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The Zvenigorod Manege – contrary to its name – has never had anything to do with horses. The building was built in the 1830s as a warehouse: salt and wine were stored here. Then it was on the outskirts of the city, now it is in the very center. In the 19th century, amateur performances were played here, and on the posters of the performances the building was designated as the Manege. This name has now been returned. In Soviet times, there was a cinema here – until now, the bus stop nearby is called “Kinoteatr”. The building was rebuilt several times – for the first time at the end of the 19th century, then in the 1960s. It went into decline in the 1990s. After 15 years, the patient, who was more dead than alive, was given to the Zvenigorod Museum-Reserve, the main exposition of which (the Royal Chambers) is located in the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery. But the ruins remained ruins, and in 2015 the Manege was removed from the museum and it was decided to sell it. The public protested, the Manege was returned to the management of the museum-reserve, which has recently been headed by Elena Kozhevnikova. The restoration of the Manege was undertaken only in 2018, it was recreated according to the project of the young architect Alexei Kurkov.