Markučiai Manor Museum is housed in the main building of the manor that belonged to Varvara and Grigory Pushkin. The museum ensemble consists of a former manor house, an 18-hectare park with ponds, a monument to A. Pushkin, St. Varvara’s Chapel and a family cemetery.  The memorial exhibition consists of six authentically furnished interiors from the late 19th century. It features original, custom-made furniture decorated with Pushkin family crests and the owners' monograms, as well as furniture made by Florentine craftsmen and imported from Italy. The exposition features a number of 19th-century household items, utensils, authentic works of art and historical photographs of Markučiai Manor and the family that lived there. 

Markučiai Manor Museum has more than 8000 exhibits. These are primarily the treasures of the Melnikov and Pushkin families, including personal belongings, manuscripts, photo negatives, books, etc., as well as the Museum’s acquisitions, including the personal library books, manuscripts, memorabilia and works of art of the famous writer and translator P. Antokolskis, which was inherited from his heirs in 1984.

The museum regularly hosts exhibitions of art, literature, photography, applied art and more.

A brief history

Markučiai has been mentioned in historical sources since the 14th century, when it belonged to the Grand Dukes of Lithuania. Later, the Grand Duke Alexander Jagiellon of Lithuania gave Markučiai to his wife Elena, who built a summer palace here. After her husband’s death, Elena left the palace and the entire estate to the nobleman Unkovskis. Later, the manor was ruled by the noblemen Kiškos and Chodkevičiai. From the latter, the Markučiai estate was bought at the beginning of the 19th century by Juozapas Eismuntas, the treasurer of Vilnius, but soon sold it to Ignas Godlevkis, a doctor. In 1867, after the construction of the Saint Petersburg-Warsaw railway line, which also crossed the area of Markučiai, the property was purchased from Ignas Godlevskis by the railway engineer and builder of the first railway line that crossed Lithuania, Aleksejus Melnikov. He set out to build a manor house for his family, and the manor house estate has survived to this day. It consisted of a number of buildings: a dwelling house, a servant's house, a stable shed, a bakery, an ice-house, etc., but only two have survived: the dwelling house and the Orthodox Church of the House of St Varvara. 

Markučiai manor was given as a dowry to A. Melnikov’s eldest daughter Varvara on the occasion of her first marriage in 1875, and she ruled the manor for 60 years until her death. Varvara Melnikova married for the second time to Grigory, the son of the famous Russian poet Pushkin. In one of the rooms of the Markučiai Manor, the couple created a Pushkin Poet's Corner, displaying the poet's personal belongings, which Grigory had brought from the Pushkins' manor in Mikhailovkoye. Both the poet's corner created by the couple and the interiors of the Melnikovs' and Pushkins' manor rooms can still be seen in the Markučiai Manor Museum today.