Arkhangelsk State Museum of Wooden Architecture and Folk Art “Malye Korely”

Arkhangelsk Oblast
The village of Malyye Karyely, Primorskiy district, Archangelsk region
Phones: + 7 (81-82) 20-41-64
Web site: korely.ru

Malye Korely is located on the high bank of the Northern Dvina, only half an hour from Arkhangelsk by car. This is one of the largest landscape expositions in Russia. Founded in 1964, the museum is a member of the Association of European Open-Air Museums and is included in the State Code of Especially Valuable Cultural Heritage Sites of the Peoples of the Russian Federation.

In Malye Korely, the most striking examples of traditional northern architecture are collected, representing the «wooden civilization» of the entire Arkhangelsk region. On the picturesque hills among the spruce forest, one can find the «villages» of log cabins, barns, wells and hedges of the Kargopolsko-Onezhskiy, Dvinskiy, Pinezhskiy and Mezenskiy sectors. Here you can see the gigantic mechanism of a grinding mill, the huge courtyard households of prosperous Kargopol peasants or pomors, the interior of the Dvina inn, the Kholmogory blacksmith shop, the fisherman’s house and the hut of the hunter. Expositions in the interiors of the country houses narrate of the artistry of the northern carpenters, about how to fish, grow bread, how to farm, celebrate weddings and even shows us the transport of our ancestors.

Malye Korely is not just an open-air museum. This is the wonderful world of the northern village, where everyone wants to return to many times. According to the feed backs of the guests of Malye Korel, tourists who visited the museum once, definitely wish to return there again to take time and walk across in a completely different time of the year, each time discovering something new for themselves.

Beside the landscape exhibition in the Malye Karely village, the museum also includes a unique ensemble of the temple in the village Nyonoksa, an ancient tent temple on the river Lyavlya, the town house M. T. Kunitsyna and commercial town hall (Marfin house) on the street museum Chumbarova-Luchinskogo in Arkhangelsk.

The territory of Malye Korely is quite large (~ 140 hectares), so the visit to the museum will take at least a few hours. You can walk around the territory at any opening hours of the museum, but expositions in distant houses start to close already a couple of hours before the end of the working day. In general, the museum is so fascinating that we recommend arriving in Malye Korely early — here you can easily spend half a day or a whole day!

Malye Korely is the most popular place for festivities. Shrovetide and Easter, New Year, Christmas, Bread Festival, Horse Festival, Haymaking and Bell Ringing Day always attract the widest audience. Adults and children participate in festive rites, sing to the accordion, swing on a swing and compete in folk fun. Here you can spin in a fancy round dance, walk on stilts, ride a horse or an «ice carousel» on a frozen pond.