Museum of Geodesy and Cartography

The educational and historical center (MIIGAiK museum complex) is located in the old Demidov estate, built in 1789-1791 according to the project of the great Russian architect M. F. Kazakov. The estate is closely intertwined with the fate of the ancient family of industrialists and patrons of the Demidovs and one of the oldest educational institutions in Russia - the Konstantinovo Mezhevsky Institute (KMI), founded by Empress Catherine II in 1779 as a surveying school at the Russian Land Office.

For a long time KMI was the center of higher geodetic education in Russia and had no analogues abroad.

Museum collections began to form in the Mezhevsky Institute at the beginning of the XIX century, but the official status of the "Museum" was obtained in 1842, the First head of the geodetic museum was a professor of geodesy, a graduate of KMI Solovyov S. M., who attached great importance to the replenishment of the museum. Tools were ordered from well-known Russian and foreign companies and craftsmen. Many instruments were donated to the museum by the Imperial Institute of Railways, the Pulkovo Observatory and the Military Topographic Department of the General Staff. The museum is primarily a collection of instruments of historical importance. With the beginning of the Soviet period, the Museum was renamed the Geodetic Museum, and in 1979 (in the year of the 200th anniversary of the educational institution), the official name of the Educational and Geodetic Museum MIIGAiK was fixed. In 2017, the museum became an Educational and Historical Center, which includes 10 rooms.