“The house is both good and bad. It is more spacious than the Moscow flat, light, warm, with an iron roof, located in a good place, has a terrace and a garden, Italian windows, etc…but it is not high enough, not young enough and looks silly and naïve from the outside …” — described Chekhov his purchase. 

On the left-hand side there is a picture of the Chekhov family on the verandah of the house in Melikhovo, dated 1892. Melikhovo way of life was especially to the liking of the writer’s parents. His father maintained order in the estate, and his mother made their house feel a home. On one of the pictures on the stand there are YevgEniya and Pavel Chekhov, and on the picture next to it the writer’s father is digging out garden beds in Melihovo garden. Apart from the garden, there were domestic animals in the estate – seven horses, a heifer and two puppies, Muir and Mirrielees.

During the first two years of his life in Melikhovo Chekhov focused on medicine. His brother MikhaIl wrote: “From the first days after we settled in Melikhovo everybody around came to know that AntOn PAvlovich is a medical doctor. People kept coming to us, bringing the sick in carts and taking the writer far away to visit the sick”. 

Another picture on the display panel is a portrait of Chekhov in the library of the estate house, among his friends and relatives. His family read a lot, and by the time they moved to Melikhovo their library counted about 2000 books.