The State Russian Museum, Mikhailovsky Palace

This guide to Mikhailovsky Palace, home of the State Russian Museum, centers on Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, who filled the widowed household with poets and composers after her husband Grand Duke Michael's death in 1849. It follows the salons where Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Tyutchev gathered, her backing of a young pianist named Anton Rubinstein, and her early role freeing peasants on her own estate before the manifesto that freed millions more. Look up at Carlo Rossi's gilt columns, raised for a wedding gift in the eighteen-twenties.