• Tomsk Regional Local History Museum
• Memorial Museum «remand prison of the NKVD»
• Planetarium
• The first Slavic mythology museum
• Tomsk State University Herbarium
• The TSU zoological museum
• «Tomsk Beer» Museum
• Paleontological museum

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Tomsk Regional Local History Museum

The idea of the public museum creation in Tomsk was issued from the city intelligentsia. In 1911 at their insistence the city government decided to open the Siberian Regional Science and Art Museum named after Alexander II .They found the location of the museum building but their plans were interrupted by the military and revolutionary events. In 1920, after examining the Bishopric house (the former estate of the owner of goldmines Astashev) the commission of the new authorities decided to open «the Museum of antiquities and the revolution» in this place.

There were a lot of different ways of museum funds creation. Intelligent, well-educated artists, architects, university professors found and gathered war and revolution things which had a great artistic and historical value. The first exhibition was opened in 1922. In October of the same year the museum was named «Tomsk Regional Museum».

The main tasks of the museum were and remain the Tomsk region research and the education of general public. Formation of the museum collections is the result of the study of ethnography, archeology and language of the native population of Western Siberia.

The museum is working closely with the scientists from Tomsk State University and Tomsk State Pedagogical University.

In the museum funds you can find an excellent collection of oriental ceramics, collection of Kulaysky taiga civilization bronze objects, Old Believers utensils and books, Buddhist and numismatic collections, the furniture collection.

Memorial Museum «remand prison of the NKVD»

One of the subdivisions of Tomsk Regional Local History Museum is the Memorial Museum «remand prison of the NKVD». The unique NKVD museum is well known not only in Russia but also abroad. This museum arouses a great interest in government officials, journalists and the public. It is one of the most visited museums of Tomsk Oblast and the region.

The museum is located in the basement of the building Lenin Avenue 44, where from 1923 to 1944 there was an internal prison of Tomsk city department of the NKVD. Area adjacent to the building served as a prison courtyard, where nowadays there is the Memory Square. In 1992 - 2004 the monuments to the victims of political repression were placed in Tomsk.

The regular exhibition includes a renovated prison corridor and chamber for persons under investigation, the interior of the investigator office.

In the four rooms of the museum (the former chambers) there are such sections of regular display as «The chronicle of repression in Tomsk», «The great Terror», «Shooting cross», «Bialystok tragedy», «Order about Family Members of Traitors of the Motherland», «Their tragic fates», «The priest fate», «Kolpashevsky Yar», «Gulag and forced settlements of the Narym area», «Underground prison tunnel» and others. Among the exhibits there are copies and original documents of the investigation files, photo albums, embroidery, paintings, drawings, playing cards, crafts made of wood and stone, which were made in camps and exiles.

The museum has an electronic databank of about 200,000 people. During the Soviet rule years they went through dispossession kulaks and mass people deportation at the area of Tomsk Oblast.

Planetarium

Tomsk Planetarium is one of the oldest in Russia and one of the divisions of the Tomsk Local History Museum.

Captured German planetarium «Carl Zeiss Jena» was brought in Tomsk in 1946. From November 1948 to 1980, the planetarium was in the building of the Local History Museum (nowadays there is the Tomsk Philharmonic organ hall). From 1980 to 1990 the planetarium was in the building of the Catholic Church the Bakunin Street 4. April 12, 2006 the new building of the planetarium was opened. It located in the block between the Lenin Street, the Marx and Cooperative Streets. Nowadays there is a dome for broadcast of the starry sky, telescopes for observation and two halls with the «space» exhibitions: in two small halls of the planetarium there are exhibitions «Tungussky phenomenon» and «The Way to the Stars».

Observation deck is the greatest sight of Tomsk planetarium. You can observe the day and night sky in special telescopes. In a favorable weather, standing on the roof in the center, you can see the whole universe: nebulae, star clusters, the mountains and the sea on the moon, Jupiter and its satellites, and if you try you can make out even Saturn rings.

The first Slavic mythology museum

The first Slavic mythology museum is a private culture institution in Tomsk.

The museum includes an art gallery, gift shop (amulets, handicrafts), Slavic clothes boutique, book shop.

The museum workers support national holidays holding which have native Russian origin (Maslenitsa Komoeditsa, The God Kupala Day), ideological action-celebration «for the health!». It devoted to the International Day of smoking giving up.

Special tours are also organized in the museum, where everyone can learn about the real man-heroes, beautiful and wise woman, all-powerful Slavic gods. You slightly open the mysterious world of fairy tales, epics, legends and ancient history.

You will see the real face of Baba Yaga, meet Bannik and Domovoy (house spirit), learn about the Great Prince Svetoslav Brave and the northern homeland of Hyperborea ... In the museum there are also thematic master classes «Amulet Doll», «Russian Beauty – Matryoshka» and «Magic of the construction of the living home» and a lot of other things.

Tomsk State University Herbarium

Tomsk Imperial University Herbarium was founded in 1885 by the botanist P.N.Krylov. Nowadays, Tomsk University Herbarium is one of the largest Herbariums of Russia. According to the method of collection, the system of information and the model order Krylov Herbarium is considered one of the best in the country.

Scientific values of the Herbarium are the result of collective labor years: about 2000 collectors were involved in the process of collecting herbarium materials. The total collection is about 500 thousand of herbarium specimens. The history of more than 115 years of the Siberia vegetation is reflected in the richest collections of the Herbarium: about 200 thousand samples of the Western, Eastern Siberia and Yenisei collections. There are also extensive flora collections of Central Asia, Mongolia and Tuva, Europe, America, East Asia, etc.

Scientists from many universities and research institutions in Russia, doctoral students, post-graduate students used the herbarium scientific materials in their work.

The TSU Zoological Museum

The zoological museum was founded in 1887, when the archival material began to appear.

Collections of the Arctic Ocean animals which were made after the well- known polar researcher and scientist Nils Adolf Eric Nordensheld's expedition, during the through swimming from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean on the steamship «Vega», became the base of the museum . For this unprecedented swimming and studying of the North Sea the scientist was awarded with the highest award of the Russian Geographical society – the Gold Konstantinovskaya medal. The supreme value was given to the serial scientific collection of bird’s skins from Kuldzhi and Semirechie, which was offered to the museum by the general - governor of the Stepnoy region - Gerasim Alekseevich Kolpakovsky, and also the collection of butterflies from Scandinavia and St. Petersburg vicinities was offered by the St. Petersburg patron Sidorov.

At the same time, the Siberian collecting under the direction of the first Siberian professor of zoology N.F.Kashchenko begun, in a classical for zoological museums variant, with the epicenter of collecting in the region of Tomsk.

In such a way the base of the largest Asian collection of animals in scientific collection funds of Russia was put. Now the base of the collection is presented by collections from the territory of Western Siberia, Altai, Kazakhstan and Mongolia, and also from some places in Eastern Siberia and the Primorsky region. With the lapse of time also the value of animal museum collection from other continents grows, it happens at the expense of globally rare species as, for example, sphenodon punctatus, apteryx australis, strigops habroptilus, etc.

Nowadays, the zoological museum occupies some audiences of the first floor of the main TSU building. In the museum there are three showrooms, a scientific storage, bone storage and a restoration workshop. The museum collections number about 120 thousand species.

«Tomsk Beer» Museum

Tomsk brewery museum was opened in 2004.

The museum of Public Company "Tomsk beer" contains unique items (beer mugs, labels, bottles, and other things related to the mystery of brewing) from the end of the XVIII century till the present. For everyone there are excursions, where you can see brewing process. In five years, the museum received more than 10,000 visitors, including people from other countries.

Museum tour a great opportunity to see how the beer is brewed with modern equipment from the first stage of molt crushing to bottling the finished product. All workshops you can see your own eyes, breathe the real aroma of malt and hops, taste the new varieties of beer and soft drinks.

Paleontological museum

The paleontological museum is located in the main building of the Tomsk State University. The museum was founded in 1926 by professor V.A.Hakhlov. The collections of fossils from Russia, Europe, and North America are presented there. The Tomsk University started to receive exhibits soon after its opening. Among the exhibits there are skeletons of a mammoth, a bison, a full skeleton of a dinosaur, skulls, teeth, vertebras of the most ancient mammals. Besides, the paleobotanical and paleozoological finds, fish prints and algae prints of the most ancient seas are presented.

In the museum it is possible to see reconstructed skeletons of the main representatives of the mammoth fauna - fossils of a bison, a mammoth and a woolly rhinoceros. The most valuable fragments are skulls, jaws with teeth of mammoths and young mammoths, skulls and fragments of skeletons of woolly rhinoceroses, bisons, horses, archidiskodons, deer, a cave bear, a lion, a saiga and many other exhibits are also exposed in specially equipped show-windows and stands of the museum show room. However the biggest part of the skeletal remains of mammoth’s fauna is concentrated in the monographic museum department created in the basement. Finds in the southeast of Western Siberia near the Shestakovo settlement in 1998 became a real sensation, two whole skeletons of early-cretaceous psittacosauruses were discovered there. Since 2000 year these skeletons have been stored in the museum in specially equipped sarcophagus, saving the natural position in a breed monolith.

Museum tour a great opportunity to see how the beer is brewed with modern equipment from the first stage of molt crushing to bottling the finished product. All workshops you can see your own eyes, breathe the real aroma of malt and hops, taste the new varieties of beer and soft drinks.