Kizhi museum, Historic wooden chapel in Kizhi Island, Russia

The chapel is a log building of dark brown horizontal timbers, with a square tower on the left rising to an open belfry of vertical posts and a tall spire of pale planks crowned by a cross. The lower main body on the right has a steep pale-plank roof and a small onion dome covered in light wooden scales, also topped with a cross; two small square windows face the front.

The museum grew out of the Kizhi Pogost, whose two churches and 18th–19th-century bell tower stood within a fence. In 1951 restorer A. V. Opolovnikov brought the Oshevnev house from Oshevnevo on Bolshoy Klimetsky Island, and the first visitors came in 1955. It became a state institution in 1966, joined by chapels, houses and farm buildings from Zaonezhye and Karelian, Russian and Vepsian villages. A centre for wooden architecture conservation opened here in 2020.

The museum takes its name from Kizhi Island, where most of its exhibits stand. Its sectors reconstruct the culture of the Russians of Zaonezhye, the Livvi Karelians of the Pryazha district, the northern Karelians, the Vepsians and the small Pudozh villages, with chapels, houses, barns, baths and smithies brought from those villages. All churches on the territory belong to the Spaso-Kizhsky Patriarchal Farmstead.

The museum occupies Kizhi Island and also has objects in Petrozavodsk and several villages of the Medvezhyegorsk district. The island lies within the Kizhi federal nature reserve, where hunting, picking berries and fishing are reserved for local residents and staff. Tourists may camp and stay overnight only in specially designated places, and boats are limited to public waterways.

The museum began in 1951 when restorer Alexander Opolovnikov moved the Oshevnev house from Oshevnevo on Bolshoy Klimetsky Island to Kizhi; it opened to visitors in 1955 and became a state institution in 1966. Since 2020 it has hosted the All-Russian Centre for the Preservation of Wooden Architecture.