Historical and Architectural Museum of Verkhoturye
The permanent exhibition of the State Historical and Architectural Museum where you can learn the history of the Ural Region is located in the building of the Sovereign Barns at the Verkhoturye Kremlin. The museum has two main exposition: «Verkhoturye. The history of the town and uyezd. 1598-1917» and «Babinov Road».
The exposition «Babinov Road» is devoted to the history of the key trade route that connected the European part of Russia with Siberia, which made it possible to develop the whole country. As is known, the European and Siberian parts of the country are divided by a rather high ridge of the Ural Mountains. Solikamsk was the main town on the European side of the Urals. It was connected with Siberia by the very long Lozva route (along the Lozva river), which took many weeks.
Feodor I Ioannovich gave the task to find a shorter way to Siberia. The search was led by a farmer Artemy Babinov, and in 1597 a passage in the mountains was found 270 kilometers south of the Lozva route. In 1598 the Verkhoturye ostrog was built on a navigable river on the other side of the Urals.
The first museum rooms are devoted to the Mansi people and the ancient settlement Neromkar on a rock rising 26 meters above the Tura. It was just there that ostrog was built for a voivode and the Streltsy who guarded the trade route.
The other museum rooms are devoted to the heyday of Verkhoturye at the beginning of 18 century, when the town rapidly developed at the expense of customs duties levied. In that time Yekaterinburg was not even founded. In those museum rooms you can see the offices of the voivode and the customs head, a Siberian merchant and a mansi who brought the skins, as well as an exiled tsar bride at the window.
In the other museum rooms there are a lot of photos and materials telling about the life of the town, both at its heyday and in the period of decline, when a new, more convenient route from the European part of Russia to Siberia through Yekaterinburg was laid in the times of Catherine II.
