The State Museum of the History of Religion is the only museum of its kind in Russia and one of the few in the world whose exhibition presents the history of the emergence and development of religion. Today the museum's collection numbers about 200,000 items, the oldest of which is more than 200 million years old! You surely wonder how this is possible and what it is. Here’s the secret: the oldest exhibit is a fragment of shale rock bearing the imprint of a prehistoric fern leaf. It was formed in the Triassic period of the Mesozoic era in Earth's geological history (about 250–200 million years ago), at a time when the outlines of the continents were completely different and the climate, flora and fauna differed greatly from those of today. It was the era when dinosaurs appeared, and around them grew various ferns, cycads, bennettitales, ginkgoes and conifer species.
But such exhibits are rather the exception. Mostly, the museum's collection consists of monuments of history and culture from different countries, eras and peoples: from archaic times, Ancient Egypt, Israel and Mesopotamia to the early European Middle Ages; from Ancient Greece and Rome to modern times.
A little history. The museum was established within the system of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. The initiator of the museum's creation and its first director was the outstanding Russian historian of religion, ethnographer and anthropologist V.G. Bogoraz-Tan (1865–1936). The core of the new museum's collection consisted of exhibits from the collections of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography named after Peter the Great (the Kunstkamera), the State Hermitage, the Library of the Academy of Sciences and the State Russian Museum, which had been used in the Anti-Religious Exhibition organized by Academy of Sciences staff in the halls of the Winter Palace in Leningrad in April 1930. On November 15, 1932 the museum was solemnly opened in the building of the Kazan Cathedral. From its opening in 1935 and until the late 1970s one of the leading sections was the "Inquisition" section with the famous staged scene "Session of the Inquisitorial Tribunal in Spain".
In May 1991 a decision was made to transfer to the museum the building on Pochtamtskaya Street, where reconstruction soon began. In 2000 the State Museum of the History of Religion moved into the new building and is now located near Saint Isaac's Square. Here a permanent exhibition has been installed that tells of the archaic and traditional beliefs of the peoples of Siberia and the Far East, Indonesia, Melanesia, the Americas and Africa, the religions of the Ancient World, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and other Eastern religions. We present cult objects, religions and beliefs in an engaging and straightforward way!
