Sights in Kola Peninsula
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Gallery M
Gallery M has changing local art exhibitions and a bar.
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Fine Arts Museum
The 1927 Fine Arts Museum hosts temporary exhibitions of varying quality.
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St Nicholas Cathedral
The city's fine churches, include the 1840 neoclassical St Nicholas Cathedral.
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Church of the Saviour on the Waters
The gleaming gold-domed Church of the Saviour on the Waters was built in 2002 from public donations.
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Regional Craft Centre
The Regional Craft Centre shows Kola Peninsula art including Apatity-style canvases 'painted' with mineral powders.
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Polar-Alpine Botanical Gardens
The lovely Polar-Alpine Botanical Gardens has hothouses which nurture tropical plants and a 2km summer-only trail climbs to the alpine tundra.
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Kazan Church
Buses 1, 12, 16 or 105 (R12) from pr Lenina run through Kukisvumchorr (‘25km’) known for its ‘miraculous’ Kazan Church.
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History Museum
The 1970s History Museum has exhibits on Russian Arctic expeditions, unique drawings of Novaya Zemlya and details of 5000-year-old Sami rock carvings.
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Lighthouse Monument
The Lighthouse Monument commemorates lost sailors including the 118 crew of the Kursk nuclear submarine that sank in the Barents Sea in 2000.
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Salma Art Salon
Salma Art Salon is a private cooperative outlet for over 200 Kola Peninsula artists. Prices are low, and the management can arrange the paperwork to expedite customs procedures.
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Regional Studies Museum
The Regional Studies Museum features geology, natural history and oceanography on the 2nd floor, and Kola Peninsula history on the 3rd floor. There’s a reasonable souvenir shop too.
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Artistic Craftsmanship Centre
The Artistic Craftsmanship Centre hosts about 30 exhibitions a year of regional crafts. You might come across anything from lacework or Pomor costumes to amulets made from rye dough or items of braided birch bark.
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Detsky Gorodok
Detsky Gorodok is a children's attraction consisting of a fake fort with swings, tunnels and climbing frames - plus a café where all ages can get a warming drink or snack. Located just up the street from the Church of the Saviour on the Waters.
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Regional Museum
The Regional Museum is located in the Kirovsk-25 mikro-rayon (bus No 1, 12 or 105), within an awesome mountain gap. Some experts believe that the neat removal of literally half a mountain here can only have been achieved through a nuclear detonation.
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Salma Cultural Centre
The Salma Cultural Centre is a cooperative outlet for over 200 Kola Peninsula artists and artisans. You'll find pictures and artefacts made from a host of materials including colourful sand/dust from local minerals, birch bark, stone, wood and ceramics. Prices are low.
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Mineralogical Museum
The Kola Scientific Centre's Mineralogical Museum, with 900 samples of Kola Peninsula minerals, rocks and ores, is a little more specialist than the Geological Museum but the colourful minerals from the Khibiny-Lovozero massif will impress anyone. Officially, visits should be prearranged, but if you ask at the reception desk of the building they'll probably send you on up to the museum.
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Museum of the History of the Exploration & Development of Northern European Russia
To the non-geologist, Apatity's most interesting museum is the Museum of the History of the Exploration & Development of Northern European Russia, which has explanations in English. It features Russian Arctic expeditions (with unique drawings of Novaya Zemlya) and interesting archaeological material on the Kanozero and Chalmny-Varre petroglyphs and the nine ancient labyrinths around the Kola coast. There are also old Sami and Pomor artefacts.
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Sami History & Culture Museum
Under Stalin, the once-nomadic Sami (Lapp) people were brutally suppressed and forcibly collectivised. Of Russia’s roughly 1600 Sami, some 900 now live in the tiny administrative village of Lovozero (Luyavvr) where a little Sami History & Culture Museum displays 2000-year-old petroglyphs and sells various Sami crafts including reindeer-fur slippers and carved bone-work. Staff can arrange English-speaking translator-guides.
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Geological Museum
The bright new Geological Museum is open to drop-in guests. Labelled mineral fragments are sold here as souvenirs. By appointment, more specialist visitors can arrange a guided visit to a second Mineralogy Collection on the top floor of the next-door Kola Scientific Centre. Friendly academics speak English but if you don’t have the geological background to pose relevant questions you’re likely to feel embarrassingly out of your depth.
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Museum of the Northern Fleet
Naval buffs make the trek to the Museum of the Northern Fleet covering the founding of Russia’s first navy in Arkhangelsk, the Murmansk convoys of WWII and the modern fleet. The museum is within a turquoise, somewhat crumbling three-storey cultural centre fronted by anchors. Take bus 10 to the penultimate stop (‘Nakhimova’, opposite ul Admirala Lobova 43), walk on for 300m, then turn left and it’s 80m up ul Tortseva. Shimmy through the building’s foyer and the museum is to the left, within.
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Lake Semyonovskoe
Atop the hill 2km north of pl Pyat Uglov, Lake Semyonovskoe is the focus of the largest open space near the centre and a favourite playground for Murmansk. The lake is named after the would-be hermit Semyon Korzhnev, an old tsarist soldier who retired at the turn of the 20th century to a cabin on the shore and was the only resident for miles around. Imagine his disappointment when Murmansk appeared on his utopian horizon!
The lake and indeed much of Murmansk are overlooked by Alyosha, a truly gigantic concrete Great Patriotic War soldier from whose feet you can enjoy spectacular views over the city. The lake is frozen for much of the year but in summer people swim and…
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Oceanarium
The mini, bubble-domed Oceanarium hosts splashy seal shows.
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Geological Museum
The town’s neat, widely spaced concrete-block architecture is hardly an attraction, but there’s a new, central Geological Museum
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Krayevyedchesky Museum
The varied exhibits of the Krayevyedchesky Museum include good features on Sami and Pomor history and the Anglo-American occupation. There's a good souvenir shop, and museum guides can be hired for city tours in English.
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