The most visited museum in the Irkutsk Region keeps growing: settlers’ farmsteads, a synagogue from Zima and opera by the walls of the Ilimsk fort.
The Taltsy Architectural and Ethnographic Museum was founded in 1966. Its 70 hectares bring together more than 160 monuments of history, architecture and ethnography from the 17th to the 20th centuries: buildings are moved here from all over the Angara region and restored.
Visitors
In 2024 the museum received 232,000 people and in 2025 246,000, becoming the most visited cultural institution in the region. Since 2026 an adult ticket has cost 350 roubles.
New zones
The tract zone took almost 20 years to build. Since 2025 the museum has been developing its settlers’ exhibition: in spring 2026 it showed Belarusian, Ukrainian and Tatar farmsteads, a mosque and the houses of the Golendry settlers, and an exhibition about the Stolypin agrarian reform was announced for the Night of Museums. On 18 July 2026, for the 60th anniversary, a horse breeder’s house (modelled on a building from the village of Tarasovo) and a synagogue recreated from documents and photographs of a 1905 building from Zima were opened.
The stage
In summer 2025 “The Queen of Spades” in Dmitry Bertman’s production was performed by the walls of the Ilimsk fort.
Sources (in Russian): IrkutskMedia, 18 July 2026; Oblastnaya Gazeta, 15 January 2025; IrkutskMedia, May 2026; IRK.ru, 17 June 2025.
