Plast Local History Museum

About museum

Plast District Museum opened in 1975 at the initiative of the Council of Veterans of the town of Plast. The museum has a rich collection of 20,000 items in storage, primarily photographs, documents and objects reflecting the history of gold mining at the Kochkar gold placers.

The museum is located in one of the town's oldest buildings, built in 1911, in the former residential mansion of the managing director of the French gold-mining company 'Anonymous Society of the Kochkar Gold Mines', Antoine Peters Balas. The building was constructed in the Art Nouveau style and has no architectural analogues in Russia.

The museum building has been a monument of regional historical and architectural significance since 1999 — a major landmark of the Plast Municipal District. There are 17 halls, three of which serve as exhibition spaces.

Today the museum is the center of scientific local history of the Plast district. Since 2017 three branches have operated in the district's villages — in Verkhnyaya Sanarka, Stepnoye and Kochkar. The Plast museum is visited by at least 10,000 people annually.