Museum Bell Center

About museum

A new museum site, part of the Valday branch of the Novgorod Museum-Reserve, is housed in a monument of civil architecture and urban planning from the first quarter of the 20th century, located 50 meters from the Bell Museum, one of Valday's most popular tourist attractions.

The exhibition of the Museum Bell Center consists of four themed halls, through which visitors can learn about the history of bells from ancient times to the present day.

The first hall introduces museum visitors to archaic bell forms — rattles and small bells from the 3rd century BC to the 14th century AD. Also on display are ritual bell objects from China, Vietnam, India, Benin and other countries, Christian bells of Europe and Russia from the 12th–18th centuries, Valday bells, and documentary materials from Russian bell foundries of the 19th–early 20th centuries.

The second hall, the largest, features a wide variety of signal bells. Passing through the next hall, with many different cabinet, gift and decorative bells, the visitor arrives at the hall of the modern history of bells.

On the first floor there is a hall with a multimedia library, a storage repository and a conference hall combined with a cinema for showing films with special effects about bell-making technology.

For children and young people there is an interactive touchscreen table with themed games where you can harness a virtual troika that will delight with its little bells, or cast a bell — again virtual — which you may not be able to put in your pocket, but you can send it by e-mail to yourself or a friend.

Of special interest is the interactive large-scale model of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. In this working model you can examine all three tiers of the bell tower and hear the ringing of different types of bells — carillon, clock and church bells.