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Anapa to host 6th Kuban museum festival in May

More than 150,000 people, both Russians and foreigners, visit the museum a year

KRASNODAR, May 9 (Itar-Tass) —— Russia’s southern resort city of Anapa will soon host the 6th Kuban museum festival, which will be held as part of the program of the Year of Russian History marking the 1,150th anniversary of the Russia statehood.

“The opening ceremony is planned for May 18, 2012. It will be held at the archaeological museum Gorgippia,” Anapa’s mayor Tatiana Yevsikova told Itar-Tass. Several contests will be organized in Anapa within the framework of the festival to encourage locals share things or documents that might be of historic interest.

The venue of the festival – the Gorgippia archaeological museum – was not an accidental choice. “This is Russia’s only outdoors archaeological museum featuring the ancient Greek colony of Gorgippia, which was part of the Kingdom of Bosporus and flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries B.C.,” the museum’s director, Olga Kazakova, told Itar-Tass. The museum is located on an area of 1.6 hectares in downtown Anapa. About half of the area is open for general public, featuring dwelling quarters, roads, wells, gutters, wineries, defensive constructions. The museum exhibits its finds – architectural details, gravestone sculptures, sarcophaguses – at the buildings of Anapa’s first resort homes built in 1887, 1990, and 1914.

One of the most precious artefacts found in Anapa is the Hercules crypt. It was unearthed in 1975. Its stone walls are decorated with frescoes depicting the labours of Hercules.

More than 150,000 people, both Russians and foreigners, visit the museum a year.