LOMONOSOV MUSEUM

3 Universitetskaya naberezhnaya 199034 St. Petersburg
Open: 11 am - 5.30 pm
Closed: Mondays
Tel. 328-1011
Nearest metro station: Vasileostrovskaya

The museum of the great Russian scholar Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765), one of the fathers of Russian science and an artist and poet, was founded in 1947 on the initiative of the academician Sergei Vavilov, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It was opened to the public on 5 January 1949.

The museum is housed in the tower and the Circular Hall of the Kunstkammer, one of the few extant buildings closely connected with Lomonosov's life and work. A memorial plaque on the facade informs us that the great man worked here from 1741 to 1765.

The exhibits, gathered in three rooms, illustrate Lomonosov's scientific and cultural activities at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Among the items on display are the scholar's personal possessions and his own treatises and literary writings, as well as works by his contemporaries. A selection of scientific apparatus and mechanisms (for example, an electric machine from the Academy's 18th-century laboratory of physics), maps, astronomical instruments and original samples of "smalt" - a coloured glasslike substance that enabled Lomonosov to revive the art of the mosaic - are also to be seen.

One of the museum's most treasured objects is the Large Academic Globe, made to replace the Gottorp Globe, which was presented to Peter I in 1713 by Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein - Gottorp, and was destroyed by the fire of 1747. It is 3m 10cm in diameter, with a round table and a bench for 12 persons inside it. On the outside the continents and oceans are shown. Inside one can see a map of the sky. Rotated by a special mechanism, the globe demonstrates the movement of the celestial sphere.