Description of the attraction
The Penza Museum of Local Lore, founded in September 1905, is located in a two-story brick building in the historical center of the city, next to the Belinsky Park. The historic building of red brick, built in 1900 on Dvoryanskaya Street (now Krasnaya Street) for the dormitory building of the female diocesan school, was transferred to the local history museum in 1922. Nowadays, next to the museum building there are authentic cannons from the First World War and a T-34 tank from the times of the Great Patriotic War.
The museum was founded by a society of lovers of natural history, which included the local intelligentsia in the person of F. F. Fedorovich, I. I. Sprygin, A. N. Magnitsky, Y. T. Simakov and many other enthusiastic collectors. From 1905 to 1911 rare exhibits of the museum could be seen by a limited number of people due to the lack of their own premises. In 1919, the museum was nationalized and received an official status - the state museum of local lore, which it is to this day.
Today the collection of the museum exceeds 125 thousand exhibits of archaeological, natural science, ethnographic, numismatic and art collections, as well as funds of printed and written sources. The main excursions of the local history museum are based on the traditions and culture of the Penza province, tell about the paleontological and geological past of the region. The archeology of the region and the excavations of the Zolotarevskoye settlement near the modern city are of considerable interest.
The Penza State Museum of Local Lore is a historical landmark of the multinational Penza Region.
