Arkhangelsk. Memorial estate "Small Korely"

Russian North is the land of taiga. Since old days peasants cut here giant huts, banyas, barns, wells, windmills from a pine and a larch logs, erected the bulks of tent temples. All this has found the expression in an exposition and the name of the Arkhangelsk State Museum of wooden architecture and a folk art " Small Korely ", the most northern open-air museum in Russia.

In 1968 the first monument of architecture - a mill from the village Bor of Holmogorskiy district was transported to the museum. Now on the territory of the museum versions of Russian windmills - tent mills (Dutchwomen) and pile mills (on a frame, on racks) are all collected here, there is here also a pound device and a watermill. The greatest windmill was transported here from the Kozheozerskiy monastery, it meets visitors directly at the entrance of the museum. Now in the museum there are more than hundred monuments of country and cult architecture of XVI-XIX centuries. The area of the museum is 139,8 hectares.

The museum shows not only the architecture, its main goal to show the whole ethnographic picture of the life Northern Russian villages, the basic economic employment of inhabitants of its six geographical and ethnographic zones. Formation of Kargopol’-Onega and Northern-Dvine sectors is practically finished, expositions of Mezenskiy and Pinezhskiy are being created now, then it’s turn of Pomorskiy and Vazhskiy sectors.

Each sector of the museum is a model of ancient village with its characteristic lay-out. Buildings of the Kargopol’-Onega sector meet visitors at the very entrance to the museum. Ensemble of Church of Rise (1669) and Bell towers (1854) from village Kushereka could be seen from afar. It is one of few temples which has been saved up to now with cube like ending. Around the Church of Rise country manors have been settled down. There are different types of northern houses which are widespread in the river Onega basin and in lake-land Kargopolskiy here. On the way to other sectors there are chapels Ilinskaya from islanding Mamonova on Kenlake and Makarevskaya from river Ken.

Mezenskiy sector forms the panorama of the museum from Northern Dvine. It stands on an abrupt hill and is distinguished by the houses transported from Mezen and Peza, and by characteristic decoration of an abrupt bank - with a retaining wall, from it as a picturesque cascade ladders, barns and baths were stretched downhill. In Limonnikov’s house from village Elkino it is possible to see some devices of northern fishery, to get acquainted with a collection of river and sea boats.

Near a large forest there is Pinezhsky sector. Pinezhsk houses are built in one line, " in the order " as people said last century. Deep taiga places (in the past this region was associated with it) are distinguished in the museum exposition by a special landscape. Here it is possible to see the hunting log hut, log huts of haying seasonal village Hornemskaya, there is Trinity chapel far in the wood - one of the most surprising monuments of the museum …
The largest of monuments in the museum – Dvinsk sector. Here the national architecture of the most important waterway of the region, Northern Dvine, which is 700 km long, and stretched from Vologodchina up to Belomorye, is presented. There is a well-known George Church (1672) from the village Vershina here.