The Museum of the Bank of Russia

About museum

The museum tells about the century-and-a-half-long history of the branch of the State Bank and the financial side of the large-scale events that took place during this time. Here you can see rare banking equipment, archival documents and banknotes from various eras, as well as learn about monetary reforms, inflation and the reorganization of the banking system.

The museum is located in the historical center of the city in an old mansion dating back to 1848. It was built for a merchant family, but at the end of the 19th century the building was rebuilt for the needs of the department, which is still there today. The atmosphere of those years is conveyed by the preserved elements of the building — a cast-iron "umbrella" over the entrance, a marble staircase, fireplaces and moldings. The exhibition covers all stages of banking development in Perm: from the first public banks of the 19th century to the creation of a modern cashless payment system. The museum's collection contains banknotes of various eras, banking equipment, unique archival documents and photographs.
The numismatic collection tells about the history of money circulation in the territory of modern Russia. Here, for example, you can find the largest banknotes ever issued in the country - government credit notes in denominations of 100 and 500 rubles, popularly known as "Katenka" and "petenka". It is not difficult to guess whose portraits are depicted on them, but it is not clear which wallet they could fit into, because the width of the banknotes is slightly less than 30 centimeters. However, they were rarely kept in wallets: at the beginning of the 20th century, the average worker earned 500 rubles in two years. For comparison with the tsarist credit cards, one of the smallest banknotes is shown — "kerenki", issued by the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky. Pretty quickly, they depreciated so much that large printed sheets with this money were no longer cut into separate bills.