ZOOLOGICAL MUSEUM

1 Universitetskaya naberezhnaya 199034 St. Petersburg
Open: 11am - 6pm
Closed: Fridays Tel. 328-0112
Nearest metro station: Vasileostrovskaya

St. Petersburg's Zoological Museum is the largest museum of its kind in Russia. It evolved from the Zoological Department of the Kunstkammer, opened in 1728, and became an independent institution in 1832.

Since 1896 the museum has been accommodated in the building of a former customs warehouse on the spit of Vasilevsky Island (1826-32, architect Giovanni Lucchini); and now forms part of the Academic Zoological Institute, which was founded in 1931.

The museum gives a broad picture of the animal species that inhabit the earth. The first collections, owned by Karl Ernst von Bar, Fedor Brandt and Alexander Middendorf, were supplemented with artefacts brought back to St. Petersburg by Russian expeditions led by such eminent scholars as Peter Pallas, Nikolai Przhevalsky, Peter Kozlov, Mikhail Pevtsov, Grigory Grum-Grzhimailo. At present, there are over 40,000 animal species on permanent display and about 15 million in the scientific reserves.

The enormous exhibition shows all the groups of the animal world: invertebrates, fish, amphibia, reptiles, and a multitude of birds and mammals. A large number of rare and even extinct animals are on display. Most noteworthy among these are the skeleton and stuffed figure of the so-called Berezovo mammoth (found in 1799), a well-preserved baby mammoth (discovered in the Magadan Region in 1979), the skeletons of a whale j and the extinct southern elephant, and the effigies of a wild camel, a snow leopard, and a gigantic ram from Komodo Island. There is also a collection of animal anomalies transferred from the Kunstkammer.

The museum makes particular use of dioramas, showing the animals in their natural environment. These exhibits demonstrate an ingenious fusion of the art of sculptural taxidermy and painting.

The already rich collections are constantly growing. As a result of research expeditions carried out by the Zoological Institute, a remarkable new exhibition, "The Fauna of Black Smokers", has been opened. It is devoted to animals living in deep, underwater vulcanic trenches.

Visitors can book a variety of different tours of the museum.