The virtual Presidential Library illustrates church relics and their custodians

On the eve of the most joyful and most revered holiday in the Orthodox world of the Easter Sunday, celebrated on April 19, 2020, the Presidential Library invites you to have a virtual tour of the exhibition Keeping the Orthodox Faith: the History of Church Museums. Marking the 1030th anniversary of Christianization of Rus’, provided in the historic building of the Synod on Senate Square, 3 in 2018. 

Presidential Library’s portal features rarities from the Museum-Treasury of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and the vestry of the Smolny Cathedral: items of church life of the 18th – 19th centuries, including icons made in different techniques and from different materials, details of the bishop's vestments, communion cloth (boards with sewn into it a particle of holy relics) of the second half of the 18th century and much more.

Thanks to the materials presented at the exposition, the visitor will find answers to the questions: how, over the centuries, it was possible to preserve the unique church relics, how and why the need arose to create the first church museums, how their fate evolved in different periods of the history of our country, who stood at the origins this big and important undertaking.

Rare archival documents, books, scientific monographs, periodicals and catalogs of church collections of the 19th century tell the history of church museums-ancient storages.

The exhibition is accompanied by unique photographs from the Presidential Library. This is the work of the photographer of the Imperial Academy of Arts and the recognized master of Russian architectural photography I. F. Barshchevsky, as well as the pioneer of Russian color photography S. M. Prokudin-Gorsky.

The exhibition Keeping the Orthodox Faith: the History of Church Museums. Marking the 1030th anniversary of Christianization of Rus’, it has become yet another exposition that has moved from real space to digital. The portal of the Presidential Library also features virtual tours of the exhibitions Weapons Designer and Assault Rifle: the path of the great master. Marking the 100th anniversary of Mikhail Kalashnikov, Monuments of book culture: from print to digital, Journey from Petrograd to Moscow. 1918: marking the 100th anniversary of the relocation of the Soviet government and the capital to Moscow, An Artist against the Fuhrer: Fascism in the Caricatures of Boris Yefimov. Marking the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, The Saving Sword of the Revolution: the Chekist in Life, Cinema and Literature, More than a game: Marking FIFA World Cup in Russia and others and others. 

The institution’s portal provides virtual tour around the legendary cruiser “Aurora”, the State Memorial Museum of Defence and Siege of Leningrad, the museum “Kobona: The Road of Life”, the museum “And the Muses Were Not Silent...”, and even visit the House-Museum of the famous writer and journalist in Crimea Yulian Semyonov.

Visitors to the portal of the Presidential Library from anywhere in the world can take an excursion to the historic building of the Synod, which today houses a modern multifunctional cultural, educational and scientific-educational center, visit the Constitution Hall with a permanent exhibition dedicated to the main document of the Russian Federation, learn about the new materials of constantly replenished interactive exposition, highlighting the revolutionary events in Petrograd.