The Rybinsk State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum Preserve is one of the oldest museums on the Volga. It was opened in 1910 on the base of a natural science collection. In 1920s the Museum was replenished with heirlooms from vacated estates of the gentry and with icons from shut-down monasteries. In addition to objects of the Old Russian art, the Museum displays West European paintings of the 16th -19th centuries, pictures by Russian artists, products of European centers of ceramics.
The collection also has ancient ceramics from Japan and China, Silesian and Bohemian glass, items of wood and bone, coins of various centuries, rare books and manuscripts. Nowadays the museum collection amounts to over 100 thousand items of iconography, painting, graphics, sculpture, arts and crafts.
