Universitetskaya Naberezhnaya 1/3
Tel. 328 0112
Bus: 7, 10, 47, K- 47, K- 128, K- 129, K- 147, K- 187
Trolley: 1, 7, 10
Open: 11am- 6pm Sat- Thu
Free on Thursdays
Zoological Museum of Saint Petersburg is housed in a building that once served as customs warehouse adjacent to the port of the city. It was constructed in 1826 under supervision of Italian architect Giovanni Lucchini. Today it houses one of the largest natural history collection that contains over 1.5 million specimens of various animals collected from all over the World. Some of the oldest items date back to the time of Peter the Great who started this collection. In fact one of the animals include personal horse of the Russian emperor who rode him into the Battle of Poltava against Swedish king. Another famous part of the collection is a giant mammoth. His carcass was discovered in Siberian tundra in 1902. It date almost 44,000 years ago, but it is well preserved due to frigid temperatures that surrounded him.
The museum was formed in 1832 by separation from the Kunstkamera
exposition. Currently, it is a structure within the Zoological
Institute.
Since 1896, the museum has occupied a building on
Universitetskaya embankment, building 1, in the city of St. Petersburg
(the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island).
It took more than 5 years to
move (the building was provided in 1893), and to prepare and reconstruct
the new site for the museum. And only on February 6/19, 1901, in the
presence of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, numerous members of the
royal family and government officials, the Museum was reopened to
visitors. In May 1922, analyzing the state of the institutions of the
academy, its vice-president, academician Vladimir Steklov, said, among
other things: becomes impossible…
During the Great Patriotic War,
the staff of the Zoological Institute suffered heavy losses, as
evidenced by a memorial plaque at the entrance to the museum. Among
those who died during the blockade: A. I. Argiropulo, N. N. Afanasyeva,
M. A. Bazhenov, A. M. Gerasimov, D. A. Ogloblin, A. N. Reichardt, A. P.
Semenov-Tyan- Shansky, A. S. Skorikov, S. S. Smirnov and others.
Major changes in the systematic exposure took place in 1947-1954.