Mariupol Museum of Local Lore

About

The Mariupol Museum of Local Lore is a museum of regional history in the city of Mariupol, Ukraine, at 20 Heorhiivska Street (Ukrainian: вулиця Георгіївська). The museum describes the natural conditions of the southern part of Donetsk Oblast and the history of the region from ancient times to the present. Its main activities of the museum are: Collection, exposition, research, scientific education and library. It was destroyed in 2022 during the Siege of Mariupol.

The museum was founded on February 6, 1920, by the city department of public education of the Mariupol Revolutionary Committee. It was the first state museum in the Donetsk region.

The work of the museum's researchers contributed to the creation of nature reserves in the Azov region: Khomutovsky Steppe (1926), Bilosaray Spit (1927) and Stone Graves (1927).

In 1937, the Mariupol Museum received the status of a regional museum and was named "Donetsk Regional Museum of Local Lore".

In 1950, in connection with the creation of the regional museum of local lore in the city of Stalino (now Donetsk ), the Mariupol museum was transferred to the category of museums of local importance.

On November 2, 1970, the "AA Zhdanov Memorial House Museum" was opened, a branch of the then "Zhdanov Museum of Local Lore". Exposition departments were: nature, history of the pre-Soviet period, history of the Soviet period, the modern period.

In 1992, the "Museum of Folk Life" and the "National Museum of the History and Ethnography of the Greeks " of the Azov Sea Region in the village of Sartana became a branch.

In 2022, the museum was almost entirely destroyed and burned down by Russian bombing during the Siege of Mariupol.

The museum has seven exhibition halls and a scientific library which holds around 17,000 books. The museum's funds contain about 53,000 exhibits, including items of tangible nature, pictorial, written (handwritten and printed), numismatic, archaeological, photographic, natural and others.

The permanent exhibition illustrates the natural conditions of the southern part of Donetsk Oblast and its history, from ancient times to the present day. The diversity of flora and fauna of the region is highlighted, which has undergone significant changes under the influence of anthropogenic factors of civilization.

From 1995 to 2001, the exposition of the history of the Soviet period and partially the history of the pre-Soviet period were reorganized and extended. The exposition of the pre-Soviet period reflects the process of settlement of the region from ancient times, as well as the development of virgin lands of Azov by Ukrainians, Greeks, Germans, Mennonites, Jews, Cossacks of the Azov Army, founding villages, towns, crafts, trade, cultural heritage. The exposition of the Soviet period focuses on household items, including models and original exhibits, showing the process of transformation of Mariupol into the largest industrial center of southern Ukraine.

In 2001, on the tenth anniversary of Ukraine's independence, a new permanent exhibition "The City of Mariupol for the Years of Ukraine's Independence" was opened. It shows Mariupol's engagement in the areas of production and in education, culture and art.

The museum preserves a number of rarities and interesting finds from the Azov region. Of special value are the decree of Catherine II to Greek Christians, initiating their resettlement from the Crimean Khanate from 1778 to 1780 to the North Pryazovia, including the village of Sartana, the Shroud of 1760, and the Gospel of 1811. Photos and postcards trace the history of the city of Mariupol and its natives from the 1870s to the present.

The basis of the archaeological collection are materials from unique monuments – the Amvrosiivka site, the Neolithic burial ground of Mariupol, tools, signs of power, jewelry, a collection of stone statues (“stone women”) of ancient and medieval nomads. This includes a bronze buckle in the form of an elk's head, an example of the "Scythian animal" style, bronze mirrors of oriental production from the Golden Horde burial ground.

Storozhenko Mykola Andriyovych, Gonta and Zalizniak stamp, 2013

Shakespeare 1904 ed., published by Brockhaus-Efron, St. Petersburg

Album published by Fratelli Fabbri Editori Milano, 1963

Vase Rostov Great Faience of the 20th century

Catherine Ceramic Factory, Sartana, early 20th century

Mariupol. Alexander Ceramic Factory. Early 20th century