Pikalevo Local History Museum

About museum

Pikalevo Local History Museum was opened in 1978. The basis of its collection came from the school museum of the village of Spirovo in the Boksitogorsky District; these were mainly household and ethnographic items, documents and photographs on the history of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945). Today the museum collection exceeds 16,000 items. Baltic-Finnic peoples live in the Boksitogorsky District — Veps and Karelians — so special attention was paid to their daily life and ethnography when assembling the collections. In 1993–1996 these exhibits were displayed at the Russian Ethnographic Museum, which made it possible to fully restore the interior of a Karelian Old Believer prayer house. The museum's collection includes metal items forged by local blacksmiths, stove tiles, tableware, fragments of chronicles, diaries, reports, Old Believer icons, and a signed icon dated 1883. The collection also contains old-printed and manuscript church books, ceramics, glass, faience and porcelain.