Description of the attraction
The Uruchye Stone Park Museum was opened on the outskirts of Minsk in 1985. This is one of the most unusual museums in the world. There is a similar museum of stones in Europe only on the territory of Lithuania.
In 1976, the Institute of Geochemistry and Geophysics of the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR decided to systematize and describe all the boulders of Belarus. To a person not familiar with the problems of geology, such an idea would seem ridiculous. The fact is that during the Ice Age, three huge glaciers rolled across the territory of modern Belarus, leaving behind a centuries-old memory in the form of boulders brought from other places.
In 1981 it was decided to create a museum of stones in Minsk. To create it, 2,134 boulders were delivered to Minsk.
From the point of view of preserving the spiritual values of our pagan ancestors, the creators of the museum committed sacrilege, literally tearing the stones from their "roots". The pagans attached great importance to stones. Often, boulders became sacrificial altars, stones indicating the path, sacred place or danger, enclosing possessions. The position of the boulder was as important as it was. But if you look at the museum of stones from the point of view of Soviet realities, when atheist officials fought against obscurantism and barbarously destroyed everything that was somehow connected with religions and beliefs, then museum workers performed a feat, preserving the priceless heritage of their ancestors for the future.
The museum exposition is located in the open air on the territory of the floodplain of the river that once flowed here. The Museum of Stones covers an area of about 7 hectares. For a long time there was a swamp and a city dump here. The territory of the future museum was drained, cleaned and symbolically divided into composite sectors.
The most famous composition of the park of stones is the geographical map of Belarus, made on a scale of 1: 2500. The stones mark the heights of the area. The stones used to create the map were taken from exactly the areas they represent. The whole map is 4.5 hectares.
The petrographic collection occupies the southeastern part of the park. It consists of four segments surrounded by a circular path. Here you can see stones of various rocks and origins: sedimentary, metamorphic and magmatic.
The exposition "The Shape of Glacial Boulders" is located in the eastern part of the park and tells about the variety of shapes of stones and boulders brought by the glacier. The Alley of Boulders looks very picturesque. Large stones are located on either side of the footpath leading to the boulder-lined meadows. "Life-giving provinces" - a panorama of the Baltic Sea and the adjacent countries laid out of stones. The largest deposits of stones are shown here.
The composition "Stone in the Life of a Man" contains sacred pagan and Christian stones saved from destruction in Soviet times, as well as ancient stones for everyday use. It is here that the famous Borisov stones are located.
