Polotsk. Museum of Belarusian book printing.

The Museum of Belarusian Book Printing is one of the largest museums in Polotsk. It was opened in 1990 to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Francysk Skaryna.

The museum has 15 exhibition halls with 2,500 museum exhibits, which are located on two floors. The total area of the museum is about 1,000 sq.m.

In the museum we can learn about the history of the emergence and development of book printing in our lands, and about the path that books take before ending up on a store shelf.

Here are stored such unique exhibits as the most ancient handwritten scrolls, very rare and valuable books. It is very interesting to look at the books of the past centuries! Among the early printed editions here are "The Teaching Gospel" published in 1595, "12 Speeches" by Jerome Faletsky published in 1558, "General Menaion" published in 1628. In the museum we can also get acquainted with a variety of printed products of different years of publication - these are magazines and newspapers, as well as postcards, leaflets, calendars, booklets. In the museum we can see what writing utensils looked like in ancient times, study writing instruments of past centuries, a printing press, a vice, a paper press. Modern editions are also presented here - the best books-laureates of competitions.

Here you can also see with your own eyes the reconstructed workshop of a book copyist, in which he sits with a quill in his hands, and you can also see a 17th-century printing house, in which a typesetter and printer work. The museum also presents the interiors of the offices of writers of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the interior of the artist-designer's workshop.

In the Belarusian Printing Museum, you can fully travel through time and clearly trace the evolution of printing and the books themselves. It's incredibly entertaining!

This is an excellent educational museum that will definitely be interesting for both adults and children.