Brest. Archaeological Museum ‘Brest’.

The Berestye Archaeological Museum is the only museum in the world of a medieval East Slavic city, located on the site of the ancient Berestye fortress.

In the 20th century, there were many attempts to identify the original location of the city, but only in 1968 were they successful. From 1969 to 1981, under the direction of Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Petr Fedorovich Lysenko, excavations were conducted, as a result of which more than 220 wooden buildings from the 11th-13th centuries, three street pavements, palisades, and numerous items of material culture of that time were discovered. An area of more than 1800 m² was uncovered.

On January 18, 1972, the Council of Ministers of the BSSR decided to establish the Berestye Museum and build a special pavilion. The pavilion, 40 x 60 m in area, is built of concrete, glass, anodized aluminum and is a gable roof with a skylight in the center. Its outlines resemble an ancient dwelling and at the same time layers of earth revealing an ancient city.

On March 2, 1982, the Berestye Archaeological Museum was opened to visitors. In the center of the pavilion is an excavation site covering an area of 1,118 m². At a depth of 4 m, there is part of a craftsman's quarter - 28 wooden residential and utility buildings from the 13th century, two street pavements, a palisade, and the remains of clay ovens. Due to the waterproofing properties of the soil and a powerful cultural layer of up to 7 m, oxygen practically did not penetrate deep. This created favorable conditions for the preservation of artifacts. Many buildings have survived for 5-9 crowns, and some even for 12, which is a great rarity. Excavations revealed the original layout of ancient Berestye. Dwellings adjoined the streets with blank walls, were placed in 3-4 rows between the streets at a distance of 0.4-0.6 m from each other. The buildings are single-chamber, above-ground, square-shaped structures. The main building material for them was coniferous logs. The foundations were pads under the corners of the houses or the remains of previous buildings.

During the archaeological work, over 43 thousand artifacts were discovered. Of these, 66% are fragments of ceramics, 21.5% are an osteological collection, 12.5% are individual finds. The most interesting and well-preserved items are presented in the museum: collections of metal locks and keys, scissors, knives, weapons, agricultural tools, glass and metal bracelets, wooden utensils, combs, children's toys, spoons, fragments of woolen fabrics, leather shoes, as well as some parts of mechanisms - butter cake, foot mortar, reel, hand mill, flax mill, weaving loom. Unique finds include a king's chess piece and a boxwood comb with 13 carved Cyrillic letters, which have been assigned the status of historical and cultural value of category "1".