The M. N. Romanov Memorial Center in Nyrob is closed for restoration until the end of 2025. The chains have been moved to Cherdyn.
Mikhail Nikitich Romanov
After the death of Ivan IV the Terrible, his eldest son Feodor ascended the throne; because of his age he ruled together with regents from the tsar’s closest circle. This provoked a struggle for power between two old noble families: the Godunovs and the Romanovs. At first the tsar’s advisor was Nikita Romanov; after his death Boris Godunov took over state affairs. Boris sent the youngest heir Dmitry to Uglich, where he died. In 1598 Feodor Ioannovich also died and the ruling line was interrupted. That same year Boris Godunov was elected tsar at the Zemsky Sobor. Godunov began to suspect the Romanovs of aiming for the throne, since they were Feodor’s cousins. Not wanting to lose power, Boris Godunov had all five Romanov brothers arrested and exiled to different parts of the country. The eldest, Feodor, was tonsured as a monk and sent to a monastery in confinement. Alexander was exiled to the White Sea at Usolye-Luda, Ivan to Pelym, Vasily to Yarensk, and Mikhail to Nyrob.
Mikhail Romanov was brought in 1601 under guard, in shackles, and placed on the outskirts of Nyrobka in a hastily dug pit covered with boards. Local children secretly brought him food away from the guards, which prolonged his life in the harsh northern conditions. In 1602 Mikhail Nikitich died and was buried near the place of his confinement. In 1606 his remains were reinterred in Moscow in the Romanov family burial vault.
In 1613 Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov ascended the Russian throne. Soon the Nyrob area was declared holy and Nyrob became a place of pilgrimage: believers from different corners of Russia came to pray at the site of the martyr’s suffering and to touch his chains.
Romanov Garden. Main gate. Autumn 2022.
In 2017 the "M. N. Romanov Memorial Center" became part of the Cherdyn Local History Museum named after A. S. Pushkin and was housed in a new building — the former almshouse, which was built for the 300th anniversary of the House of Romanov next to the Romanov Garden. It is now an integrated complex with a permanent exhibition dedicated to the history of the imprisonment and veneration of boyar Mikhail Nikitich Romanov. The fetters of the disgraced boyar returned to their historical place — Nyrob.
In the summer of 2023 the installation of an iconostasis was completed in the chapel over M. N. Romanov’s pit with the support of the Cultural Foundation "Great Cherdyn", restoration of the Romanov Garden was begun, and volunteers from Perm school No. 9 named after A. S. Pushkin together with local residents planted more than 250 trees from the list of A. N. Zelenin, the garden’s designer, whose design dates back to 1914.
Tree planting in the Romanov Garden in Nyrob, autumn 2023.
Since November 1, 2024 the almshouse building has been closed for restoration. The pit-dungeon and the Romanov Garden remain open for viewing. The chains of boyar Mikhail Romanov have been moved to Cherdyn and are on display in the new museum space at Yurganovskaya 58 (1st floor). Restoration will last until the end of 2025.
The new exhibition features a Nyrob relic — the shackles of Mikhail Romanov. The exhibition materials tell the story of boyar Mikhail Nikitich Romanov’s exile to the village of Nyrobka in the early 16th century, as well as the history of the founding of Nyrob’s churches and the Nyrob shrine — the manifested icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker.
The exhibition is complemented by a display of icons of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. The five icons on display from the museum’s collection are rare examples of icon-painting, representing various iconographic depictions of St. Nicholas venerated in Northern Prikamye.
Among the icons presented is one truly outstanding piece — a copy of the miracle-working 16th-century icon: the Image of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Nikolo-Berezovsky, 19th century. The original miracle-working icon is currently considered lost, having disappeared during the years of persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church in the early 20th century.
