History

Religion - Olchon region - Museums - Legend of Lake Baikal

The Taltsy Museum of Wooden Architecture and Ethnography

The Taltsy Museum is located southest of Irkutsk. It covers an area of about 67 ha. Founded in 1967 by the president of the russian federation the museum is a highly valuable object of cultural heritage of buryat´s architectural history. It has about 60 monuments which mostly are re-settlements from the flodded lands of the Angara river. The main monuments are the tower of the fort of Ilimsk and an active Kazan chapel.

Open-Air Ethnographic Museum

The ethnographic museum is a 15 minutes bus ride from Ulan Ude. It’s a large settlement of local architecture from Prehistoric times to nowadays. At the entrance gate, you’ll find a map of the different areas of the open air museum. You can walk through the areas, under the trees, or in a large grassy field, and discover.

For example there is an Evenk camp. Evenks were nomad people traveling through Siberia with deers and skiis. They settled for a season then moved on further. They made tipi tents with branches and the bark of trees. Inside the tipis you can discover all kinds of wooden utensils and tools as well as water baskets made out of animal skin. There’s also the tent of a Shaman, with sculptures of animals and different pelts worn during ceremonies. Unfortunately many pelt or wooden objects are exposed to sun and rain and deteriorate with time. Another area of the ethnographic museum is consacrated to a later kind of housing: the famous Yurt houses. You can visit a summer Yurt house. Its six walls are made out of tree trunks and covered with mud. Its shape inside is hexagonal. The roof is covered with grass and there’s a top window to let light in and fire smoke out. The winter Yurts had the same form, except that the walls were covered with snow, to keep the inside warm.
On the shore of Baikal people still build Yurt camps, mainly to accommodate tourists (Olkhon, Snake Bay). Another part of the museum is dedicated to more modern times housing. You can visit the home of poor or noble villagers from 18th or 19th century. The houses are furnished like in old times. Authentic pieces of embroideries, wooden objects, etc. show how people lived in those times.

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