 The Moscow University, the most famous building on Mokhovaya Street and Russia?s best educational institution, is located opposite to the Manege. The University?s construction was initiated by Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov.
On January 12(or January 25 by the Julian calendar) 1755, when the Day of St. Tatiana the Martyr was marked, count I. Shuvalov submitted a petition to Empress Elizaveta Petrovna asking to found the Moscow University. The Order was signed on that same day.
So, this was the way that the Tatiana?s Day, the most celebrated holiday of Moscow?s studentry, was inThe classicism-style building was built in 1783 under the project of M. Kazakov, the leading Russian architect of that time. The front hall with its portico was located in the main building and the wing structures contained a library as well as a mineralogical museum.
Following Moscow?s fire of 1812 (which resulted in destructing the library of the rarest books, museum collections and archives) the building was restored and reconstructed by D. Zhilyardi in the empire style. In the 1920s Moscow?s chief architect O. Bove regarded the building on Mokhovaya Street precisely as a composition center of all Manege Square.
The University?s printing-house was the birthplace of the Russian book-publishing. For over100 years the library had been the only library accessible to everyone in the city and a local newspaper was the first non-government means of mass media in the country.Russia?s men of the greatest intellect received their education at the Moscow University.
Its first graduates in the 18th century included famous architect Bazhenov and author Fonvizin. Among students in the next century were Hertzen and Belinsky, Lermontov and Turgenev, historians Soloviev and Klyuchevsky, In the late 19th-early 20th centuries the Moscow University was attended by such outstanding thinkers as Vladimir Soloviev, Rozanov, Bulgakov and Florensky as well as prominent scientists Stoletov, Lebedev, Sechenov, Timiryazev, Vernadsky and many others.
Since 1922 there have been statues of Hertzen and Ogarev installed in the University?s yard as if to personify the whole generation of the best representatives of the Russian science and culture.
After the Great October Revolution the University received the state status and was titled the Moscow State University.
In 1940 it was named after Mikhail Lomonosov. In the 1970s all the departments of the University (except two of them) being located there moved to new buildings of the Moscow State University on the Lenin Hills.
District: Downtown
Address: 11, Mokhovaya St., Moscow
Underground: Borovitskaya
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