The Kamyanka Historical Museum of the State Historical and Cultural Reserve is located in one of the buildings of the former Davydovs Family’s manor – in the “Steward’s House”, which is an architectural monument of the mid-nineteenth century. It is in this house where the world-famous composer Petro Ilyich Tchaikovsky lived while he was visiting his sister Olexandra Davydova. He had visited Kamyanka for 28 years in a raw.
This house, which was built in the 1860s, has a rich history. After the February Revolution of 1917, the All-Russian Special Commission for Combating Counter-revolution, Sabotage and Speculation also known in abbreviation as “Cheka” of Chyhyryn County was located here. Not far from the house, there is one of the basements, where the Soviet security officers temporarily held prisoners and even made executions. Later on, a polyclinic and a hospital were located in the Davydov Family’s former house. In the 1960s the Kamyanka Children’s Music School was named after Petro Tchaikovsky. In 1995, the Kamyanka District Historical Museum was opened in the building, which became part of the Kamyanka State Historical and Cultural Reserve on January 1, 1996.
Overall, the Historical Museum in Kamyanka has 8 exhibition halls: Petro Tchaikovsky’s Memorial Room; The Hall of Ancient History; the Hall of the Liberation Struggle of 1917-1923, where is presented the exposition, which tells about the Ukrainian People’s Republic’s war for independence, collectivization and industrialization, and the Holodomor of 1932-1933 in our region; The Ethnography Hall; The Hall of Development of Culture and Education in the beginning of the XX century and bourgeois life; The Hall of the Second World War. The Historical Museum has an Art Gallery consisting of two halls: the Permanent Exhibition Hall, which presents works made by local artists, and the Temporary Exhibition Hall.
The exposition of the Historical Museum presents more than 3000 exhibits. They are telling about the history of our region from the Paleolithic period (30 – 50 thousand years ago) through the Bronze Age (7-5 thousand years ago), and up to Medieval, The Modern Age, and until the present days.
