Irkutsk Regional Historic Memorial Decembrists' Museum, Historical museum complex in Irkutsk, Russia.
The Irkutsk Regional Historic Memorial Decembrists' Museum consists of two separate wooden memorial houses: the Volkonsky House at 10 Volkonsky Lane and the Trubetskoy House at 64 Dzerzhinskogo Street. The Volkonsky house is a two-storey building; the Trubetskoy branch occupies a single-storey wooden building. Rooms are furnished with family belongings, books, furniture, paintings and period fittings to recreate mid-19th-century interiors.
After their failed uprising against Tsar Nicholas I in 1825, many Decembrist leaders were sent to Siberia and settled in Irkutsk following their sentences. This forced relocation marked a turning point in the region's history.
The museum shows how exiled Decembrists introduced European customs, education, and artistic traditions to Siberia during the 19th century. The displayed objects and rooms reveal the influence these exiles had on local society.
The two memorial houses stand apart: the Volkonsky house at pereulok Volkonskogo 10, the Trubetskoy house at ulitsa Dzerzhinskogo 64, so plan to walk between them. The Volkonsky estate keeps or reconstructs its outbuildings, such as the carriage shed and pigsty. Booklets about the museum exist in Russian, English, French and German.
The Volkonsky house was built in Urik, where the prince settled after hard labour in 1836, and moved to Irkutsk in 1847 when he was allowed to live in the city. After the family left for European Russia, a local merchant bought it for a craft school opened there in 1868; from 1920 it held communal flats until the 1970s.
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