Asbest Historical Museum

About museum

The museum opened in 1984 and a year later became part of the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore. In the exhibition "History of the City of Asbest" you can learn interesting facts about the mineral asbestos, which was used in everyday life as far back as the ancient Greeks, priests of Ancient India and Corsicans in the 17th century. The largest deposits of chrysotile asbestos in the world are concentrated around the city of Asbest. Photographs and documents reflect the beginning of its extraction in these places at the end of the 19th century and key milestones in the achievement-rich history of the 130-year-old city. In addition, the first Russian emeralds were discovered in the vicinity of what would become Asbest in the early 19th century. There is no space in the Urals comparable to the hall "Minerals of the Bazhenov Deposit", where you can see all varieties and states of asbestos! In the display cases the "mountain flax" (chrysotile) is shown alongside mica, garnet, chalcedony, calcite and other typical Ural rocks. In the exhibition "History of Peasant Life", by looking at handmade household items, you can feel like a resident of the settlement of Kudelka — the name the town bore until 1928. The large and small exhibition halls and even the museum lobby host traveling exhibitions from other museums, temporary exhibitions by artists and photographers from Asbest and nearby settlements, decorative and applied arts by local craftsmen, and private collections. These halls annually host the traditional city art exhibitions "Spring Vernissage" and "Autumn Palette".