Description of the attraction
The Regional Museum of Local Lore of the city of Murmansk is the oldest museum in the Murmansk Region, which was founded on October 17, 1926. The museum is located in a building that has become a historical monument of the city. The tasks of the museum include: storage, acquisition and popularization of historical monuments of the Murmansk region. There are 17 exhibition halls in the museum building.
The activities to create the museum began in the early 1920s. In 1924, a local history corner was created in the small House of a reindeer breeder and a fisherman, initiated by Professor G. A. Kluge, who assembled his own team to study the vast Murmansk region. In 1926 Mikhailov Mikhail Nikolaevich became the head of the museum.
On the day of its opening, the local history museum presented to visitors about 500 items and at least 800 books. Before the start of the Great Patriotic War, the museum funds amounted to about 3 thousand storage units, and the library consisted of about 3, 2 thousand books. During the war, the museum library and funds were urgently evacuated to the city of Monchegorsk, although some of them were still lost.
In the spring of 1945, the museum returned to its hometown. In 1957, the grand opening of a new exhibition took place in a modern building.
It took time from 1960 to 1992 to create a permanent museum exhibition. Museum employees with incredible activity collected monuments of the spiritual and material culture of the region, making trips to various villages, towns and cities, and also processed the collections, made plans for subsequent exhibitions.
During 1983-1986, major repair and restoration works were carried out in the museum building. The task of restoring the expositions was entrusted to the team under the leadership of the director Pozhidaev Vladimir Alexandrovich. In the autumn of November 8, 1986, the significantly renovated museum was again ready to welcome visitors. In the period from 1989 to 1992, a new exposition was built under the name "Murmansk Region during 1945-1992".
The exposition "Nature of the Murmansk Region" tells about the richest bowels of the Kola Peninsula, while you can view materials about the famous superdeep Kola well, which is listed in the Guinness Book of Records, and also learn in detail about the flora and fauna of the region. Shown here are: a dry aquarium called "Life in the Barents Sea", a diorama "Birds' Market" and "Animals of the Sub-Arctic" with a beautiful imitation of the northern lights. Exhibited materials about the wealth of the White and Barents Seas, as well as the activities of the Kandalaksha, Lapland nature reserves, the Polar Research Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries, and more.
The exhibition, which tells about the historical development of the region, is dedicated to archaeological monuments, tools of cultural crafts of the Pomors and Sami, genuine objects of the everyday aspect of life, interiors of dwellings, trade items, models of the Kola fortress and churches, as well as exhibits on the construction of the city of Murmansk and the railway in it.
The museum contains materials telling about revolutionary actions in the Murmansk region, as well as about the rise of industry during the years of collectivization during the 1920-1930s, the development of the famous Northern Sea Route, the formation of the Northern Sea Fleet and the defense of the region during the Great Patriotic War.
The development of the region in the post-war years can be found in the materials of 1945-1960, which indicate the pace of restoration of the region's economy, culture and science. Here are the personal belongings of Y. Gagarin, items of the flagship during the Antarctic expeditions, documents on awarding the Murmansk region with the honorary order of Lenin in 1966 and conferring the glory of a hero-city to Murmansk in 1985.
The last section of the exposition is devoted to trends in the social, economic and political spheres of the region, from 1985 to the present day.
