The Semenkovo Architectural and Ethnographic Museum is an interesting museum of wooden architecture of the Russian North. It is located 15 kilometers northwest of the center of Vologda. Here you can see wooden houses, churches, mills and outbuildings brought from different districts of the Vologda region.
Most of the houses in the Semenkovo Museum of Wooden Architecture were built in the 19th or early 20th century. There are about two dozen similar museums in other cities of Russia. The most famous of them are the Kizhi Museum on Lake Onega, the Vitoslavlitsy Museum in Veliky Novgorod or the Museum in the village of Shushenskoye in the Krasnoyarsk region.
There are two streets in the Semenkovo Museum, where wooden houses are installed. These houses are mainly brought from the eastern districts of the Vologda region, where the city of Veliky Ustyug is located. At the entrance to the Semenkovo Museum, visitors see windmill. The tall windmill of the peasant A.Durov was brought from the village of Borok in the Totemsky district of the Vologda region. Next to it you can see two grain barns.
On the right side, near the forest, the high tent church of St. George is visible. This wooden church is a copy of the church from the village of Pocha Tarnogsky district. The original church was built in 1700, but after being moved to the Semenkovo Museum, it was not possible to preserve the old church, so a copy was built here.
On the streets of the Semenkovo Museum you can see wooden houses, traditional for the Russian north. Considering the cold winters, the residential and household part was built under a single roof. Domestic animals also lived in the household part.
In the center of the Semenkovo Museum there is a house with the most beautiful facade decoration. This is the house of Vasily Kopylov from the village of Korostelevo, Vologda region. It was built in 1881 and has been preserved to this day in very good condition. In most houses there are small expositions dedicated to various crafts. So visitors can learn how people lived in the villages in the Russian north at the end of the 19th century.
