Historical and Local Lore Museum, Nizhny Tagil

About museum

The eastern (former laboratory) wing of the main factory administration building, which houses the Historical and Local Lore Museum, is a federal architectural monument. The two-storey building in the style of late Classicism was constructed in 1829–1830 to a design by the outstanding Ural architect A.Z. Komarov and executed by district architect A.P. Chebotarev. In 1874–1887 the building underwent partial reconstruction by architect K.A. Lutsenko. The wing accommodated the archives of the Demidov factory administration, the first library in Nizhny Tagil, a laboratory, and for a time the Museum of Natural History and Antiquities, established by P.N. Demidov in 1841. From 1928 to the present day the local history museum has been located here. The local history museum was revived in 1924; its director became A.N. Slovtsov, a teacher at the Mining and Metallurgical Technical School. Museum staff of that period did immense work collecting and systematizing exhibits from the former mining-plant museum and new artifacts. Subsequent generations of museum workers also made a significant contribution to the study of the region’s history and to assembling collections that became the basis for creating new museums within the museum-reserve established in 1987. The Historical and Local Lore Museum is the direct successor to the Museum of Natural History and the Mining-Plant Museum; its exhibitions are graced by family portraits of the Demidovs, works by the most renowned Russian and Western European artists, famous Demidov rarities, and advertising materials from Tagil factories of the 19th century. The exhibition demonstrates the ancient settlement of the region — unique wooden items from the Gorbunov peat bog dating back up to 5,000 years — and also tells of the Russian settlement of the Urals in the 16th–17th centuries. The current exhibition was created in 1992. It covers all the important milestones in the region’s development — from the earliest times to 1917.