Brest Regional Museum of Local Studies

Brest Regional Museum of Local Studies has been operating since 1950. June 22, 1957, the museum received its first visitors in the rebuilt building of the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross (built in 1856). In 1990 the museum changed its address. It was allocated the building of the former hotel "Bristol" on K. Marx St. 60, built in the early twentieth century and included in the zone of historical planning and development of Brest. The total display area of the main museum and its branches is 3459 m², the exhibition area - 505 m².

Exposition

On the 1st floor of the museum in four halls is the exhibition "The Native Nature" which presents natural resources of our region with natural exhibits, dioramas and photographs. The introduction begins with a physical and geographical characteristics of Brest region. Of particular interest to visitors is the reconstruction of the left forelimb of a mammoth, reaching a height of 3.5 meters. The exposition presents the main types of minerals of Brest region — samples of granite, peat, mineral waters. To characterize the main natural landscapes of the region and their inhabitants the diorama method of display is used. The visitor can see the local animals and birds in a number of sections - landscape complexes "Riverbank", "Lake", "Swamp", "Meadow", "Forest". There is also information about the National Park "Belovezhskaya Pushcha" and about the main nature preservation areas of the Brest region. Special attention in the exposition is paid to the issues of environmental protection.

In 2012-2016 the museum has opened a permanent exhibition "History of Brest region from ancient times to the beginning of the XXI century". It is located on the second floor of the museum in nine rooms on an area of 478 m². It exhibits about 2800 items from all the fund collections. These are collections of archaeology and ethnography, documents and photographs, numismatics and bonistics, weapons and equipment, faleristics and sphragistics, applied graphics, paintings and others. The exposition presents scientific developments made in the course of joint work of the museum staff with the scientific staff of the archaeology department of the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Belarus: maps, reconstructions, voiced diorama. The historical exposition is supplemented by the reconstruction of the printing press of the ХI century, reconstruction of the passenger compartment in 1912, the model of the German dirigible of the First World War. Of interest is the reconstructed exterior of one of the streets of Brest nad Bug from the 1930s with a reconstruction of a telephone booth and authentic tiling, a reconstruction of a prison cell of the Beryoza-Kartuzskaya concentration camp. Among the interactive objects stands out a touch panel with information about the history of Brest region in the 1920s-1930s and a quiz "Poleski Fair". In one of the halls is a fragment of the interior of the office of the first secretary of the Brest Regional Party Committee P. Masherov with authentic furniture, personal belongings and an electronic interactive "window" in which you can see the most interesting pages of Brest region life in 1950-1980s.

Museum collection

The museum fund includes more than 173 thousand museum items, the scientific-auxiliary fund consists of about 56 thousand items. The museum fund consists of 23 collections: archeological, bonological, objects of clothing, graphics, documents, icons, icons in icon covers, film and sound documents, negatives, numismatics, weapons and equipment, household and hard ethnographic items, applied graphics, sculpture, technical means and devices, textile and clothing, faleristics and sfragistics, photodocuments, art metal. The largest and one of the oldest is archeological. Materials of different historic epochs are collected here — from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages (over 40 thousand items). A special place in the collection belongs to finds from the Berestye medieval settlement, which became the basis of the branch's exposition. Numismatic collection includes over 14,000 items. The museum contains 18 treasures found on the territory of Brest region (16 coin and 2 hoards). The most valuable are the treasures of gold and silverware of the 16th-17th centuries, found in 1962 near the village of Stradech, Brest district, and a treasure of Roman silver denarii of the 1st-2nd centuries AD, found near the village of Lyshchitsy, Brest region in 1974. The originality of Brest region reflects the collection of folk costumes of seven historical and ethnographic regions of the region, double-sided postilts, Motol handpieces, Bezdzha aprons, folk ceramics of large pottery centers (Gorodnaya, Pruzhany, Ruzhany).

On the basis of unique collections of the museum there are branches: the archeological museum "Berestye", "Kamenets Tower", museum "Saved Art Treasures" and "Art Museum".

Annually museum expositions and events are visited by about 200000 persons, about 4000 excursions, about 100 cultural-educational events are held, more than 60 exhibitions are exhibited, interactive excursions are developed and new museum projects are successfully realized. It has become traditional for the museum to carry out such events and projects as "Night at the Museum", "Block 18", "Great Praise Worthy...", "Week of Birds", "Ecological Saturday".

Services for visitors

  • Guided, thematic, family excursions, guided game tours.
  • Museum educational programs and activities.
  • Visiting museum.
  • Mobile, traveling exhibitions.
  • Lectures.
  • Museum events.