No wonder the world-famous marine painter Ivan Aivazovsky’s largest collection of paintings is located not in Moscow or Saint Petersburg, but in Feodosia, a small resort town of the Crimean Peninsula. The great Russian artist was born and raised here. Later he bequeathed all his inheritance to his beloved hometown, including a two-story Italian-style mansion on the Black Sea coast, built according to his own design. During his lifetime, Aivazovsky set up an art gallery within its walls, where he exhibited his works. After his death, all property passed into the property of Feodosia, and in 1922 the gallery received the status of a state museum of seascape painting. Today there are 416 works by Aivazovsky, as well as the artist's personal belongings, including an easel and a notebook with sketches in the old house-museum. Famous marine paintings are located on the second floor of the museum, other works on mythical and biblical subjects such as "The Flood" and "The Chaos of the Creation of the World", along with paintings by his contemporaries are presented in the house of his sister built nearby. In total, the gallery's collection includes more than 12 thousand works of art on a marine theme, including the largest painting by Aivazovsky entitled "From Calm to Hurricane", which is seven meters long and more than two meters wide, and a four-meter canvas "Among the Waves", which he created at the age of eighty. What is more, the gallery's expositions introduce to visitors not only works of the great artist, but also the history of his life and the creation of the gallery, as well as a collection of antique furniture and porcelain, weapons and silver jewelry of that time. In front of the main entrance to the museum, there is a monument to Aivazovsky made by a famous sculptor Ilya Ginzburg, erected in 1930.