Pechenga District Historical and Local History Museum

About museum

The northwesternmost museum in Russia, located on the border of Russia, Norway and Finland, was opened on July 21, 1985. Here you can see household items and cultural artifacts of the peoples living in these areas, the history of the development of the largest copper-nickel deposit and the Pechenganickel combine, as well as the activities of the northernmost Orthodox Trifon-Pechenga men's monastery. The museum features a collection of cores extracted from a depth of 12,262 m, as well as items that belonged to Yuri Gagarin. The museum provides services for the collection, storage, study and publication of museum items and collections, exhibition activities and guided tours. The museum has permanent exhibitions dedicated to the district's nature, the culture and everyday life of the Saami, the history of the Trifon-Pechenga Monastery, military operations in the Arctic and during the Great Patriotic War (World War II), as well as the cross-border ties of the settlement of Nikel and the town of Kirkenes.