Natural and Scientific Museum of the V.I. Lenin Ilmensky State Reserve of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

The museum begins with a visit to the historic hall. In its showcases there are samples of minerals first discovered in the Ilmen Mountains, portraits of pioneer scientists, as well as materials dedicated to the history of the study of Ilmeni and the stages of the formation of the reserve.

In the Ilmen Hall there are rocks, minerals of granite and alkaline pegmatites, a systematic collection of Ilmen minerals. A unique geological map of the Ilmen Mountains is also shown here. Near this hall there is a collection of minerals from complexes similar to Ilmen: the Vishnegorsk, Lovozersky and Khibinsky massifs. In the biological hall, visitors get acquainted with various biolandscape complexes of the Southern Urals. The main part of the hall is occupied by a large diorama with a length of 33 meters, in which you can see the typical species of animal and plant world of the reserve at different times of the year. Some species are decorated with biogroups: "The fox family at the hole", "The attack of wolves on the deer", "Deaf current", "Beavers near the hut". In the center of the hall in small windows there are collections of nests, eggs, rare species of plants, various types of lichens. In the hall of systematics there are 764 mineral species and their varieties. In the hall of mineralogy of deposits there are about 700 samples from different types of deposits: pegmatite, hydrothermal, weathering, sedimentary and metamorphic, as well as minerals of technogenesis. In the same hall there are sections of landscape Ural jasper, blue topazes, purple amethysts, minerals of Emerald mines. Only part of the exposition is presented in the museum building, a unique "Museum in Nature" was created on the territory of the Ilmensky Reserve.

The visiting center of the museum is a lecture hall, which hosts scientific conferences, seminars, schools, lectures, meetings with schoolchildren, scientists, nature lovers. Computer lectures, popular science videos about the nature complex of the reserve are demonstrated in the hall, exhibitions are organized.

Specially built three-storey building design of the museum was made by artists of the Factory of Painting and Designing Arts and masters of the Zoological Museum of St. Petersburg; carved doors with figures of animals (artistic carvings made by a team of carvers of the Miass forestry - Yudin, S. Eremeev, V. Rozhkov, V. Kravchenko; stained glass "Minerals" (G.A. Ivanov): stained glass window "Nature" (A.Ivanova)