Konstantin K. Artseulov Free Flight Museum

About museum

At the Hang Gliding Museum visitors get acquainted with the history of the sport’s development and with several models of flying machines. This is the first and only museum of this kind in the CIS countries. The museum’s history began in 1990 in a city with long traditions of aeronautics — Feodosia. It was on Klementyeva (Uzun‑Syrt) Mountain, located near the city, that Soviet aviation began to take shape. In 1923 the Higher Glider Flight School was opened there. The celebrated creator of spacecraft Sergei Korolev studied at that school. Since the last century, glider gatherings and competitions have been held on the mountain. Since 2012 a new concept for the institution — the Free Flight Museum — has been promoted; the museum reopened in 2014. In 2015, in honor of its 25th anniversary, the institution was officially renamed the Free Flight Museum named after Konstantin Artseulov. The museum was given the name of the legendary pilot, the grandson of the painter Ivan Aivazovsky. He was the first in the history of Russian aviation to perform a dangerous maneuver: he put a glider into a spin and successfully recovered it to normal flight. Moreover, Konstantin Artseulov was a talented illustrator and collected materials on the development of domestic aeronautics. The Free Flight Museum has become a gathering center for hang‑glider pilots, and meetings are now held here. Museum staff organize events for the younger generation, tell the history of aviation, and show themed films.