Mahilioŭ Regional Homeland Museum, Regional history museum in Mahilioŭ, Belarus.
The Mahilioŭ Regional Museum of Local History occupies the former district court building on Savieckaja Square, where it has been since 1961. Its four main sections cover the nature of the region, archaeology and ancient history, pre-Soviet history, and the Soviet period. The holdings number over 300,000 items, including finds from local excavations, coins and hoards, religious objects, paintings and household goods.
Founded on 15 November 1867 under the provincial statistical committee as the Mogilev Museum, it merged in 1918 with the church-archaeological museum opened in 1904. In 1928–1929 it received items from the USSR state antique fund, including Sigismund III's silver mace and the Cross of Euphrosyne of Polotsk. Its collections were lost during the war, and it reopened in 1949; since 1 July 1961 it has occupied the former district court building on Soviet Square.
The museum's ethnographic section holds mannequins dressed in Belarusian peasant costume, old farm tools, folk weaving and embroidery, clay household ware, children's toys and a batleika puppet-theatre box, alongside photographs of local ethnographic types. Its art section keeps paintings by Vasnetsov, Makovsky, Aivazovsky, Polenov and Myasoedov, plus porcelain, silver and bronze. Mogilev was known for artistic furniture-making.
The museum occupies the former district court building on Savieckaja Square, where it has been since 1 July 1961. It was closed for major repairs from 1977 to July 1990, after which the current permanent display opened. The building also houses branches devoted to ethnography, open storage of the funds and the military glory of the Mahilioŭ region.
The museum has borne the name of Yauhen Ramanavich Ramanau since 2005. He was a leading figure of Belarusian local history and organised the church-archaeological museum opened in Mahilioŭ in 1904, which merged with the older museum in 1918.
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