Belarusian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War History
Fan-shaped 2014 museum on Pobediteley Avenue holding Belarus's main Second World War collection.
The museum was founded on 25 October 1944, while the war was still being fought, and opened to the public in the ruins of newly liberated Minsk. It moved several times before the present building on Pobediteley Avenue was inaugurated on 2 July 2014, on the eve of Independence Day and the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Belarus. Viktar Kramarenka, who also worked on the National Library and the Minsk railway station, designed a half-ring plan that wraps around the earlier Minsk Hero City obelisk.
Ten themed halls cover some 15,600 square metres and draw on holdings of roughly 143,000 objects grouped in twenty-eight collections. The displays follow the outbreak of war, the occupation of Belarus, the partisan movement, the camps including Maly Trostenets, and the liberation of 1944, using dioramas, aircraft, armoured vehicles and personal papers. The route ends in the glazed Victory Hall, a domed rotunda inscribed with the names of those given the title Hero of the Soviet Union.
Highlights
- Half-ring building of 2014 wrapped around the Minsk Hero City obelisk
- Ten themed halls covering about 15,600 square metres
- Glazed Victory Hall rotunda with commemorative inscriptions
- Dioramas, aircraft and armoured vehicles from the 1941-44 campaigns
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