Nizhny Novgorod is a highly industrialized city, producing both military and civilian products with a rather impressive variety for quite a long time. It also has a long history of being a center for technical innovation and improvement, thanks to its many universities and research centres, as well as its “close to Moscow but further away from the ever so volatile borders with Europe” location. All of this means that Nizhny is home to quite a lot of museums dedicated to some of the finest technical, scientific, and industrial achievements of the city and its denizens. Unfortunately, I am not necessarily the person to be interested in such spectacles, and as such, do excuse me for the less than usual attention to detail that haunts the list below.
Technical Museum – https://yandex.com/maps/-/CCUOMPxuHD
Tiny but interesting is what I could comment on this place, plain and simple. It barely has two “halls” and one of them is not much bigger than my bedroom. However, what it keeps in those two small halls is worth checking out. Anything from Soviet helmets used in space travel (the real deals, not some fakes) to old movie “players” can be found amongst these exhibitions. To be fair, it seems like there is no real direction or even a theme here, with the only thing binding all these items together being that they are all some “technical things.” This is kind of bizarre, but it does work at the end of the day. After all, even the name of this museum is very nondescript. It is in the dead center of the city so you can definitely spend an extra half an hour and check this place out for around 300 roubles.
Radio Laboratory – https://yandex.com/maps/-/CCUOMTA~oB
Nizhny Novgorod has an extensive history with radio, as it was one of the more important hotspots for its development during the revolutionary period of the country and its succeeding decade or two. This allowed the city to have a wonderful museum on radio broadcasting and the technology behind it. A great, if not the best, museum guide will accompany you for more than two hours as he tirelessly talks about every single artifact the museum holds in its three humble halls. Despite the apparent language barrier, he tried his best to get what he means through our thick skulls, and I will appreciate him for that forever. Radio is relevant to a part of my more “professional” studies and as such I may be biased in saying this but this “laboratory” sure deserves some of your time, at the very least to see some of the coolest radios and TVs that the Soviet Union produced during its heydays.
Some Other Honourable Mentions
I did tell you that this “list” was not going to be as detailed as some of the other ones I wrote until this point. It is because the subject matter is less interesting for me, and quite frankly, most of these museums are found far away from the city centre, in the more industrial outskirts of Nizhny. It is a chore to visit them and be back, especially considering the fact that most of them are quite small to begin with, taking less time to enjoy them than suffering through the bus ride one way… However, some of the museums below (GAZ comes to mind) are known to be quite superb within their niche, so do give them a shot if you are around there area.
GAZ Museum – https://yandex.com/maps/-/CCUOMTapsC
Railway Museum – https://yandex.com/maps/-/CCUOMTuG8C
Steam Locomotives of Russia – https://yandex.com/maps/-/CCUOMTBoXB
Red Factory Museum – https://yandex.com/maps/-/CCUOMTQCcA