One of the cool things about being in a big, old city like Moscow is the way in which neighborhoods are often layered with remnants of different historical eras. At one street intersection you can find the church in which Pushkin married Natalia Goncharova in 1831 (Greater Church of the Ascension) and the Ryabushinsky Mansion, built in 1900 for an influential merchant family and writer Maxim Gorky’s residence from 1931 to his death in 1936. Today the mansion functions as a Gorky museum, but visitors can still see the hidden chapel that was used by the Ryabushinsky family to practice Old Believer Christianity in private.
The Ryabushinsky Mansion is a striking example of style moderne or art nouveau architecture.

Style Moderne favors curving lines and water motifs, as well as images of flowers. This is evident in the exterior of the house, with the curved, wave-like grates of the fence and the floral mosaics that adorn the walls.

I found the outside of the building to be beautiful, and not that out-of-the-ordinary. And then I went inside, and saw a curving, intricately carved limestone staircase topped with a jelly-fish-like lamp.

This particular room makes you feel like you could be underwater. The rest of the house is similar – with watery stained-glass and unusual details (from above you realize that the lamp is actually a turtle). When I later found out that Ryabushinsky backed modern artist Wassily Kandinsky, I was not surprised.
Caroline Brooke, Moscow: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)