12 Artifacts project to mark Brest's millennium

Only one unique item and only for a week – Brest Local History Museum has launched the 12 Artifacts project to showcase the 1,000 year history of the city. Every month of 2019, Brest Local History Museum will exhibit priceless rarities from its holdings: documents, items of archeology, icon painting, vexillology… Each artifact will be on display for only one week. People will be able to see truly exclusive items practically all of which will be exhibited for the first time.

“These items can be described as “the first”, “the only”, and “the one-of-a-kind”. They have different origins, purpose, time of creation, but they have one thing in common: their connection to the history and culture of Brest,” said Nina Kirillova, the Head of Science and Exposition Department, the author of the project.

The first artifact presented to the public was a boxwood comb of the early 13th century with 13 Cyrillic letters written on it. It was found in 1970 by a school student who volunteered at the excavations at the site of the ancient town Berestye. “This finding is truly unique. Berestye Archaeological Museum has always exhibited a replica of the comb because the value of the original is so great that we keep it in the holdings,” Nina Kirillova added.

Brest Local History Museum plans to delight visitors during the whole year of Brest’s millennium celebrations. Brest residents and visitors are invited to take part in a range of interesting projects. The Night of Museums event will also be dedicated to the city’s millennium. “Our main objective is to finish the re-exposition and the overhaul of our subsidiary Berestye Archaeological Museum. We will open new halls for permanent exhibitions, put on display a lot of new items. The museum itself will change too,” museum’s director Aleksei Mitukov said.