The Solvychegodsky Museum of Local History and Arts was founded in May, 1919. The core of its collection were the monuments of Ancient Russian art and decorative and applied art objects of the 16th - 17th centuries which were kept at the Blagoveshchensky Cathedral of the town of Solvychegodsk.

At present the Museum complex comprises two monuments of architecture of federal significance – the Blagoveshchensky Cathedral (1560-1584) and the Spasoobydenskaya Church (the second half of the 17th - the 19th centuries), a family burial place of the Stroganovs, as well as the Joseph Stalin Museum, School-Workshop of Folk Crafts. The Museum depository contains collections of Ancient Russian Fine Arts, of decorative and applied arts of the 16th – 17th centuries, paintings, handwritten and first printed books, Russian and Soviet paintings, graphics, etc.

World-famous are the donations of the Stroganovs to the Blagoveshchensky Cathedral – the icons of the ‘Stroganov’s School”, church embroidery, silver arts objects of the 16th – 17th centuries. The works of the Stroganovs’ artisans from the Museum collection were shown at the International exhibitions in France, Italy, Japan, the USA, the Netherlands.

In the 19th century Solvychegodsk became the place of political exile. Many well-known members of Narodnaya Volya (‘People’s Freedom’) organization as well as leaders and participants of almost all mass revolutionary movements in Russia at the end of the 19th – the beginning of the 20th centuries, were ordered to stay there. In 1909 and 1910-1911 I.V. Dzhugashvili (Stalin) served his sentence in exile there; the house of M.P. Kuzakova where he rented a room was made a museum in 1933. Since 1963 J.Stalin Museum is part of the Solvychegodsky Museum of Local History and Arts. The interior of M. Kuzakova’s house of the time when J. Stalin lived there has been intact.

More than ten ancients looms, wonderful examples of traditional textile of old artisans and young apprentices from Solvychegodsk, different tools for flax processing can be seen at the Museum school of crafts. The School was opened at the Museum in 1994 to revive weaving and embroidery, the traditional women’s crafts of the Solvychegda Land. Visitors of the School have a chance not only to see the embroidery and weaving techniques, belts making, but also to take part in the processes, to try on the costumes and headwear made to the ancient patterns, to participate in the performance of Petrushka Puppet Theatre.

The Blagoveshchensky Cathedral of the town of Solvychegodsk is one of the most ancient monuments of stone architecture in the Russian North; it is an outstanding monument of the Northern architecture, a brilliant example of a new type of stone Russian architecture which came to life in the 16th century instead of the widely used four-pillared buildings. It is a town church of a large size characteristic for the 16th century with three apses and five domes standing on a high basement and surrounded with a gallery and side-altars.

By the end of the 1550s Anika Fyodorovich Stroganov with sons and grandsons owned huge material, industrial and men’s resources. Being of old age he thought of building a church to thank God for giving him talents and success and to remember his ancestors and his whole clan. The Stroganovs built their own private church for the family and servants; they had a numerous staff of priests on a payroll.

The interior of the Summer Church of the Blagoveshchensky Cathedral is a rare example of ancient Russian interior which has preserved its original decorations.

The high four-tier iconostasis was created in the 1690s by Grigory Ustinov, a carver from Moscow. Since the end of the 16th century the Sanctuary doors have been preserved; these are a remarkable creation of the ancient Russian art, an example of fine and intricate work artistically done.

The coloured foreground of sheet mica is covered by plates of gilded tin, finely cut out. The decorative plates cover the whole of the folds and the ciborium as a precious lace. These fine decorations glitter as a pattern of precious stones; they contrast dramatically with the larger forms of wooden carvings of the iconostasis itself.

The ornaments are made by pouncing when some stuff (fine sand, pounded mice, wool) is poured to a surface covered with glue.

The main attraction of the Summer Church interior is the frescoes made in 1601 by the group of Moscow icon painters by the order of Nikita Grigoryevich Stroganov. The paintings cover the whole of the pillars, walls, vaults and arches of the Cathedral. The main place belongs to the compositions devoted to the Mother of God - scenes of her life, the acathist to the Most Holy Mother of God, events concerning the icon of the Mother of God of Lydda. The large composition «The Last Judgement» is painted on the west wall of the Cathedral. The north and south wall reveals are devoted to saints – to those who have the same names as members of the Stroganovs’ Family, to locally worshipped saints and to Russian saints.

Ornamental line which runs across all the walls of the Cathedral is a written chronicle of its foundation, consecration, decoration, of its founders and builders.

There are marvelous places in the Kotlas District where man can get spiritual healing. For centuries people come to the holy churches of Turovets with the purpose in mind.

There is a mountain covered with forest on the left bank of the Northern Dvina River, 30 km from Kotlas, 8 km from the settlement of Shipitsyno. Here, in the place which had been blessed by the presence of the Heavenly Tsarina herself, as legend says, there in a medicinal spring; nearby two churches have been built – Church of the Assumption of the Birth-Giver of God and the Theophany Church.

Some miracles have happened in the Turovets Land. In Ivan the Terrible’s times the Tartar tribes of Cheremis who came from Kazan, planned to ravage the holy place and take the miracle-working icon of the Virgin Hodigitria. They were blindness-stricken by the God’s wrath and could not move from the place for three days. They asked the Heavenly Tsarina for forgiveness and gave a vow to order a true copy of the miracle-working image, to cover it with gold and send to Turovets. This same copy is still on the Turovets mountain in the Church of Theophany.