Museum of the History of the city of Orenburg

The Orenburg History Museum is located on the banks of the Ural River, on Pushkin Boulevard. In front of the building there is a monument to the poet by sculptor Van Stepanyan, erected in 1978. This is probably why the residents of the city often call the museum "Pushkin".

"The building" in which the museum is located was built in 1856 by order of Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky (during this period - the governor General of Orenburg and Samara) in the style of "Neo-Gothic" (formerly "pseudo-Gothic") to store the provincial archive and treasury. The place for the construction was determined by the fact that earlier there was a money storeroom with a cellar. It is known from archival sources that the construction contract was carried out by Ivan Petrovich Skalochkin, a talented self-taught fortress architect.

In 1856, the construction of the building was completed. The clock of the "customs department", previously located in Gostiny Dvor in Orenburg, was installed on its tower.
Later, the building was adapted for the main guardhouse, which existed here until 1974.

By decree of the authorities in the 1930s, the chiming clock from the guardhouse tower was transported to Samara for the building of the district House of Officers under construction.

In 1978, on the initiative of the chairman of the Orenburg City Executive Committee, Yuri Dmitrievich Garankin, the building was transferred to the city. After several years of restoration work, on April 30, 1983, the department of pre-Soviet history of the Orenburg Regional Museum of Local Lore was opened in it. Simultaneously with the restoration of the building, the clock on the tower was restored according to the drawings of the talented Orenburg watchmaker Nikolai Stepanovich Kuznetsov.

In 1987, the museum building was registered as an architectural monument (Decision of the Executive Committee of the Orenburg Regional Council of People's Deputies No. 179 dated 05/13/87).

In 1989, the status of the museum changed - it ceased to be a branch of the Regional Museum and gained independence, and in 1995 the building of the Museum of the History of Orenburg was included in the list of architectural monuments of federal significance (Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 17 dated 02/20/95).

The museum fund of the Orenburg History Museum reflects the richness of the history and culture of the city, the originality of urban life, the history and culture of various nationalities living in Orenburg and the Orenburg region.

The Orenburg Museum of History has more than 8000 items in its main collection. The main collection includes interesting ethnographic objects (Bashkir, Kazakh, Mordovian national clothes, jewelry), materials telling about outstanding representatives of Russian culture who made a significant contribution to the development of the Orenburg region and the country (personal belongings and photographs of poet Y.S.Entin, People's Artist of the USSR L.P.Filatova, People's Artist of the RSFSR V.A.Bortsova and others).

The total exhibition area of the MBU "Museum of the History of Orenburg" is 1,671 square meters, about 40 thousand people visit the museum and its divisions per year.