Mihail Kogălniceanu Memorial Museum, Iași

The Mihail Kogălniceanu Memorial Museum stands at 11 Strada Mihail Kogălniceanu, in the Copou area of Iași, and is a branch of the History Museum of Moldavia within the "Moldova" National Museum Complex Iași. The house, a neoclassical building with an oval ballroom, is a listed historic monument. The earliest records of the property link it to the Hermeziu family in 1807-1808. In 1817 it was bought by Ilie Kogălniceanu, father of Mihail Kogălniceanu, who was born here and lived here with his family until his death in 1891. During the First World War the building housed a court martial, and in 1920 Kogălniceanu's daughter sold it to the Society for the Protection of War Orphans. The house was badly damaged in the Second World War and later restored. In the early 1970s the building passed to the History Museum of Moldavia, which set up the memorial museum. The house was consolidated and restored between 1994 and 1999, and in 2009-2012 the exhibition was reorganised to recreate the setting of a nineteenth-century aristocratic home, with objects connected to Kogălniceanu and his family. The museum also hosts lectures, book launches and temporary exhibitions.