National Museum of Military History

Worth a detour

Two museums in one. The indoor route is chronological and conventional — flags, orders, uniforms, edged weapons and firearms from the founding of the state to the twentieth century. The open-air exhibition at the back is what people actually remember: equipment parked in rows on the grass, close enough to read the rivets. It is well east of the tourist centre, on Cherkovna Street.

Story

Background

The indoor galleries are worth an hour if you like this sort of thing and twenty minutes if you do not. There is also a Russian library of rare nineteenth-century publications on the Balkan campaigns, and a children's museum for ages three to twelve laid out as four themed rooms about leadership, invention, courage and how museums work.

Outdoors is the reason most people make the trip. The hardware sits in the open on a large lawn behind the building, unroped and unlabelled in places, and you can walk among it rather than look at it over a barrier. In good weather that is a pleasant hour; in January it is a cold one, and there is nowhere to shelter.

Practically: entry runs about five euros, a euro or so for students and pensioners, free for children under seven and for serving military, and free for everyone on the last Wednesday of the month. The museum opens Wednesday to Sunday and the ticket office shuts an hour before the doors. It is a walk or a short ride from the centre — far enough that it is worth going deliberately rather than hoping to pass it.