An Ancient Egyptian Temple in the Middle of Siberia

An Ancient Egyptian Temple in the Middle of Siberia. What? Yes

The Krasnoyarsk Museum of Local Lore is one of the oldest museums in Siberia and the Far East and one of the largest in Russia. Its building, designed in the Egyptian style, was the work of the distinguished Krasnoyarsk architect Leonid Alexandrovich Chernyshev, who agreed to draw up the plans and supervise the construction free of charge, drawing heavily on the scientific pavilion he had already realised for the First West Siberian Agricultural Exhibition in Omsk.

Construction began in the first warm days of 1914, but because of the First World War the building was left unfinished and served as barracks and a military hospital. In 1920, during the fumigation of the premises with sulphur, the building burned down altogether. Repairs began only in 1927 and were completed by 1929.

The museum's architecture breaks stereotypes: in the heart of Siberia stands an Egyptian temple with red walls and themed images on its façade. Oddly enough, there are no mummies in the museum, but there are impressive palaeontological exhibits: a complete mammoth skeleton, a stegosaurus skeleton unique in Russia, a reconstruction of a woolly rhinoceros and many other rarities.

The museum's holdings are vast in both significance and scope: more than 35,000 archaeological items, over 10,000 works of fine art, collections of church art and ethnography, and natural-history collections of world standing; it also keeps written sources and manuscripts, archives, a library, the epistolary legacy of the Decembrists, collections connected with V.I. Surikov and V.P. Astafyev, weapons and much else besides.