Belgorod State Historical and Local History Museum

About museum

Belgorod State Historical and Local History Museum is one of the oldest cultural institutions in the region. It was opened on October 25, 1924 as a branch of the Kursk Provincial Museum. Initially the museum was housed in the premises of the former men's Trinity Monastery. In a short time collections were formed numbering about 8,000 items at that time. During the Great Patriotic War all museum valuables were destroyed and plundered by the Nazi occupiers. Only after the war did the collection of exhibits resume. The museum resumed operations on August 5, 1948 at house No. 42 on Budennogo Street (now Glory Avenue).

In 1963 the city local history museum was granted the status of a regional museum. On October 22, 1973 it opened to visitors in the building of the Transfiguration Cathedral. In 1991 the cathedral building was returned to the Orthodox Church and the museum was moved to a new specially constructed building (architect – V. V. Vishnevsky). In January 1994 the exhibition "Returning Memory to the Past..." was opened. The exhibits presented introduce unique natural monuments of the region, the diversity of the animal and plant world, and illuminate the history of the region from ancient times to the present. The museum's collections currently number over 160,000 items. It is visited annually by more than 80,000 people.