Museum of Natural History of Tatarstan

The Museum of Natural History of Tatarstan is a branch of the Kazan Kremlin Museum-Reserve, dedicated to the geological past of the planet and the region. It occupies one of the buildings of the former Kazan Cadet School, built in the 19th century — next door to the Khazine Art Gallery and the Hermitage-Kazan Centre, but in a separate building within the Kremlin complex.

The museum opened in 2005, when the old cadet school building was adapted to house a natural history exhibition. The choice of building was no accident: the spacious halls, originally designed for the training needs of cadets, proved well suited to display cases of minerals, fossils and large palaeontological finds requiring considerable exhibition space. The appearance of such a museum in Kazan also makes sense scientifically: the Upper Permian deposits along the banks of the Volga and Kama within the republic are so rich in fossils of therapsids and other Late Palaeozoic animals that one of the stages of the Permian geological timescale — the Tatarian — was named after the region where these finds were made.

The exhibition spans two floors and twelve halls. On the first floor, visitors learn about the structure of the Solar System, astrophysical phenomena and the origin of the planets, as well as the geological history of Tatarstan — the “Storeroom of the Deep” hall displays samples of oil and other mineral resources of the republic, along with an account of how they are extracted. A separate hall, “Minerals of the Earth,” brings together crystals and rocks gathered from around the world.

The second floor is devoted to the history of life on the planet. The halls “The Beginning of the Journey” and “The World of Ancient Life” present hypotheses on the origin of life and the earliest organisms, while the palaeontological section is arranged as a continuous narrative of vertebrate evolution — from the first fish and ancient amphibians, through therapsids and marine reptiles, to dinosaurs, mammoths, cave bears, woolly rhinoceroses and, finally, Homo sapiens. The exhibits include meteorites and skeletons of prehistoric animals.

The museum places strong emphasis on interactivity: a working model of a mud volcano eruption, “cosmic scales,” and a telescope through which visitors can examine details of the exhibition are all on display, while those wishing to try their hand at palaeontology can work at a simulated dig site with buried bones. This format makes the museum popular with families and school groups, complementing the more traditional Kremlin tour routes.

By housing its geological and palaeontological collections within the walls of the former military school, the Kazan Kremlin gained another point of attraction, broadening the customary image of the museum-reserve — from the history of khanates and empire to the history of the Earth itself.