Polotsk historical-cultural museum-reserve

National Polotsk Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve began to take shape in 1967. In 1968 came "the situation of the historical and archaeological reserve", and November 20 Polotsk City Council of Deputies adopted a resolution on the protection zone around the Sophia Cathedral. Polotsk Historical and Archaeological Reserve is the branch museum, which in turn was a subsidiary of the Vitebsk Regional Museum. Begin in 1967 began to take shape in Polotsk for research, restoration and museification archaeological monuments and architecture. In 1969 began the restoration of the Cathedral of St. Sophia, where the planned opening of a museum of atheism. However, a museum of atheism was transferred to Grodno, and reserve in 1985 was given the status of an independent association of museum, a branch of which was Polotsk Museum. In 1990 he was the man the Resolution "On Polotsk Historical and Cultural Reserve" and approved the Regulation "On Polotsk Historical and Cultural Reserve of republican values." Exposure of some museums housed in a monument of architecture:

• Selyshche and Settlement (VI-VIII centuries.);
• Zapolote (1st millennium BC);
• Upper Castle with the Sophia Cathedral (XI-XVIII cc.);
• Lower Castle with the shaft of Ivan the Terrible (XVI century);
• Transfiguration Church with frescoes and the foundations of the temple-tomb (XII century);
• Сomplex of the former Belchitskogo (Sts) Monastery (XII century);
• "House of Peter I» (XVII c.);
• Сomplex of the former Jesuit college with a retaining wall (XVIII c.)
• "Warm" Euphrosinia Church (XIX c.);
• Holy Cross Cathedral (XIX c.);
• Epiphany Monastery complex with the Cathedral and the sister school (XVIII c.);
• Lutheran Church (1888);
• Red Bridge (XIX c.).

National Polotsk Historical and Cultural Museum - the museum ab'yadnanne with all the features inherent to the museum and the museum-reserve. It has national significance and regional subordination and What is a historic area, which is guarded sites being studied, restored and adapted for the museum exhibition. All in all, the Museum has 11 museums Polotsk demonstrative area of 4 thousand m2:

1. Children's Museum;
2. National History Museum;
3. Museum of Belarusian printing;
4. Museum Library of Simeon Polotsk;
5. Museum of military glory;
6. Museum of the History of St. Sophia Cathedral;
7. Museum-apartment of Hero of the Soviet Union Z.M. Tusnolobova-Marchenko;
8. Museum of Traditional weaving Lakeland;
9. Natural Ecological Museum;
10. Office exhibition "A Walk on the Lower Intercession";
11. An art gallery;

The total number of museum objects is 85 870, of which the main fund 60894, scientific support - 24976. The museum has a souvenir presented books, booklets, pottery with symbols, magnets, greeting cards, basket weaving, to a CD. The reserve with its buffer zone, a zone of regulation of development, present and future of the museum is the nucleus around which the conditions for the conversion of the historic city of Polotsk Museum. In 2010, part of the National Polotsk Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve was included historical and cultural complex "Field of the glory", dedicated to the history of Polotsk fortified area (located in the village of Gomel Polotsk district).

The museum was awarded the special prize of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus in the "Museology" - 2005

Key areas of research staff of the reserve are: research, research fund, permament show and educational upbringing. Research work - one of the main directions in the reserve, upon which all the other museum activities: scientific acquisition, restoration, preservation funds, permament show, methodical and educational-upbringing work. The research work includes the study of primary sources and conducted in accordance with the profiles of existing and future of museums in accordance with the plan museification unique historical territory of Polotsk. It is conducted in the following areas: museology, history, architecture, literature, art, typography and Belarusian publishing, pedagogy, sociology museum, the region's nature, ecology, ethnography. Scientific stock work related to the study of cognition and values ​​the material nature of museum objects. Scientific organization of funds designed to fix the value of museum objects for science, culture in general, and specifically for this museum, as well as their specific legal status, to create the conditions that would have contributed to their long-term preservation, study and use in the museum's purposes.