Gus-Khrustalny Crystal Museum

The Maltsov family moved their glassworks to the river Gus in 1756, and the town that grew around it took the name - Gus of the Crystal. The works made pressed and cut glass for two centuries, and the museum holds the record of it: several thousand pieces from eighteenth-century engraved goblets and gold-painted service ware through Art Nouveau to Soviet industrial production and the studio glass of the 1960s and 70s, which is often the most interesting part. The setting does a lot of the work, because the museum is inside St George's cathedral, built for the town by Leon Benois in 1892 to 1904, with a mosaic by Viktor Vasnetsov and his large canvas of the Last Judgement filling the west wall - so the glass is shown under a church roof with the painting above it. The original works has been through hard times since 1990 with production interrupted, and glass sold locally is of mixed origin.

What you actually see

• The cathedral setting - a glass collection housed inside a 1904 church.
• The Vasnetsov Last Judgement - the large canvas on the west wall above the display.
• The Soviet studio glass - experimental pieces of the 1960s and 70s.
• The eighteenth-century ware - engraved and gold-painted glass from the early works.

When to go

All year. One to two hours. Closed Mondays and the last Thursday of the month.

Honest expectations

Labelling is Russian. The town outside is a plain industrial place with little else to see. Glass sold in local shops and markets varies in quality and origin, and not all of it is made here. Bus connections from Vladimir are slow.

Nearby

Vladimir and its cathedrals are about an hour and a half away; the Meshchera lowland is around the town.