The State Kizhi Open-Air Museum presents a collection of traditional peasantry culture including buildings and structures, things of everyday life, icons etc., created during the last three centuries in Russian, Karelian and Veps villages in various districts of Karelia.

    The Museum is situated at a 6S-krn distance from the City of Petrozavodsk, on the Island of Kizhi, one of the numerous picturesque islands in the vicinity of the southern part of the Zaonezhye peninsula

    Nowadays, the Kizhi Museum has one of the largest collections of northern Russian peasantry culture.. The masterpiece of wooden architecture -the Kizhi architectural ensemble erected in the ISth -19th centuries became the

    basis of the Kizhi architectural collection. In addition, the most ancient northern Russian wooden church -the Church of the Resurrection ofLazarus (the 14th century), several chapels, about two dozens of fanners' houses, a lot

    of household structures such as barns, threshing barns, bathhouses, etc. have been transferred to the Museum area since its foundation, the total number achieving 76 pieces of architectural art.

    The collection of cultural history includes more than 30 000 pieces which were in use in the villages on the territory of Karelia in the 19th -early 20th centuries. Mainly, they are household articles like utensils, pieces of furniture, tableware. About 500 icons dated from the 16th to 19th centuries present unique features of the northern icon-painting tradition. Among them there is the only in Russia collection of the ceiling -"sky" icons from the churches and chapels of the area around Lake Onega. The Museum collection includes folding icons, crosses and other pieces of copper casting created by the craftsmen of the Vyg Old-Beleivers' community. The spiritual world of northern Russian peasants is reflected in the collection of old printed books and manuscripts.