Open-air museum

Kizhi is the most famous open-air museum in Russia .

Street at Den Gamle By Open Air Museum (Old Town) in Denmark .

An open-air museum - in the most general sense, any museum whose exposition is exhibited outdoors. Such museums include sculpture parks, miniature parks , and many technical museums (open-air exhibits of museums of aviation, military equipment, and transport are often located).

In a narrower sense, open-air museums are museums that showcase examples of architectural structures. Many museums carry out a comprehensive reconstruction of the past, historical buildings are not just separate exhibits, but form an interconnected complex. Thus, visitors get the opportunity to visit the reconstructed village of the past, getting a general idea of ​​the history and ethnography of the respective country or locality.

Recently, there has been a tendency to reproduce traditional crafts and activities within the open-air museums that are characteristic of the respective locality and time - for example, the work of a miller, weaver, blacksmith, potter, carpenter, distillery, beekeeper and many others. Sometimes museum visitors are also invited to try their hand under the guidance of a specialist. Some crafts, in some cases, far exceed the scope of the museum ( Botanicus in the Czech Republic, which specializes in the manufacture of cosmetics and perfumes based on ancient, sometimes medieval, techniques and technologies, has a developed network of stores in its own country and even beyond its borders).

In some museums, in addition to architecture, the transport of past years is being reconstructed. For example, the open air museum in Arnhem ( Netherlands ) has a historical tram line , while the Black Country Living Museum in the Dudley area ( UK ) also has a historical trolley bus in addition to the historical tram.

Historical transport in open-air museums can perform not only the function of an existing exhibit, but also a utilitarian transport function, since the area of ​​such museums can be very extensive.

There are open-air museums reconstructing the most diverse periods of history - from the sites of primitive man to the working villages of the early 20th century.

One of the first widely known open-air museums was opened in 1891 by Skansen on Fr. Djurgården in Stockholm ( Sweden ), in connection with which his name became a household name for ethnographic museums in most European languages.