Description of the attraction
The building of the local history museum was built in the middle of the eighteenth century for the richest resident of Saratov - Mikhail Adrianovich Ustinov. The original construction included two two-storey, detached buildings, which miraculously survived in a grand fire in 1800 (historians say: it was the owner's order to cover the houses with a tarp and water them with water).
MA Ustinov was known as a kind-hearted person, sociable and hospitable. In his lifetime, he built 16 churches and gave a second life to the Holy Trinity Cathedral. In 1813, with the donations of Ustinov, the temple was strengthened, restored, and a gallery was built around it. In the same year, Mikhail Adrianovich decided to connect his two houses, adding on one more floor, and invited the famous St. Petersburg architect I. F. Kolodin for this. The architect coped with Ustinov's idea superbly, adding a stucco ornament and erecting a portal of Corinthian columns. In this form (without significant changes) the mansion has survived to our time. Ustinov's mansion is one of the best monuments of Russian classicism of the nineteenth century and is protected by the state.
In 1830, Mikhail Adrianovich Ustinov handed over the building of the theological seminary, and in 1929 the new government gave the estate to the Regional Museum of Local Lore, which is considered one of the oldest museums in the Volga region.
The Saratov Regional Museum of Local History, founded in 1886 by the Saratov Archival Commission, functions as a scientific and methodological center for local history and museum studies, has ten branches and is a member of the Association of Russian Museums. In the funds and exhibition halls of the museum, there are about 400 thousand items of paleontological, archaeological and ethnographic significance. Also presented are handwritten and early printed books, photographs, religious objects and much more related to the history and culture of the region.
