The Presidential Library’s virtual tour tells about church relics and their custodians

On the days of the most joyful and most revered holiday of the Easter Sunday, celebrated in 2021 on May 2, the Presidential Library provides a virtual tour of the exhibition Keeping Orthodox Faith: The History of Church Museums. Marking the 1030th Anniversary of Christianization of Rus’, which was opened in the historic building of the Synod on Senate Square, 3.

The Presidential Library’s portal presents rarities from the Museum-ancient repository of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery and the sacristy of the Smolny Cathedral: objects of church life of the 18th-19th centuries, including icons made in different techniques and from different materials, details of bishop's vestments, antimensions (plates with a piece of holy relics sewn into it) of the second half of the 18th century and much more.

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

The history of church museums-ancient depositories is told by rare archival documents, books, scientific monographs, periodicals and catalogs of church collections of the 19th century.

The exposition is accompanied by unique photographs from the Presidential Library’s collections. These are the works 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.

Virtual projects are an actively developing area of the Presidential Library's activity, thanks to which the electronic repository, along with paper, photo, audio and video materials, is replenished with exhibits from the exhibitions and items from museum collections.

Today there are more than twenty-five virtual tours and excursions available for remote visits. They are now available on the Presidential Library’s portal in the Exhibitions section at the link https://www.prlib.ru/about_exhibition.