Fire breaks out at Moscow’s Pushkin Museum, home to 700,000 artworks (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

One of the buildings at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, the largest collection of European art in the Russian capital, has caught fire. Photos and videos on social media show thick smoke above the roof of the building.

Witnesses said on Twitter that white smoke was seen billowing from the roof and it turned black by the time firefighters arrived.

The fire occurred in the air ventilation system of the Department of Private Collections, TASS reports, citing the emergency services. The building is located just across the road from the main site of the museum.

Museum workers evacuated 30 people before the firefighters arrived. Fifteen fire-fighting vehicles are currently at the site tackling the blaze, the emergency services told RT.

Seventy people and more than 20 fire-fighting vehicles are currently at the site tackling the blaze, the emergency services told RT.

The fire has been contained to a 40-sq-meter area. The blaze was fully extinguished after over an hour after it broke out.

There were no visitors inside the private collections’ two-story building as it is currently closed for reconstruction and no exhibitions are held there. No artworks were damaged by the flames, according to preliminary information provided by a fire department official, cited by TASS.

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, also known as the Pushkin Museum, contains around 700,000 artworks of different epochs, including French art of the 19th-20th centuries. The museum was founded in 1912 and is located in the historical center of Moscow, not far from the Kremlin.