The Vyra post road station during Pushkin times
Exhibit of traditional culture
Exhibit of postal tradition
Living quarters exhibit
Exhibit in the courtyard buildings

The village of Vyra is first mentioned in The Levy Book of Great Novgorod back in the 15th century.

As for the Vyra post road station, it was set up in 1800 when a local landlord, Lieutenant-General Malyutin initiated its foundation here. Originally (1800-1807), it was located in a peasant's house and all the barns and stables around were assigned for the station. The first manager of the station happened to be the steward of the village - Fyodor Ryleev, father of Kondraty Ryleev - a poet who was later executed as one of the active Decembrists' - participants of the uprising of Russian nobility.

During Pushkin times an important Byelorussian post road lay here connecting Petersburg with western provinces of Russia. Travellers changed horses at the stations, and Vyra was the third station in a row when coming from the capital. It was a typical place of a kind occupying two plastered and painted pink buildings facing the road. The buildings were connected by a brick wall having a big gate in the center. Through the gate carriages, coaches, wagons reached a wide paved courtyard with hay lofts, coach-houses, tethering posts, a fire-tower and a well in the center.

Two wooden stables, barns and a smithy adjacent to the plastered buildings of the station completed the courtyard to a closed square. Life was really busy in the yard: with troikas coming and going out, coachmen hurrying and stablemen changing foamy horses to fresh ones.

The station building facing north provided lodging to a station keeper. It is used to be called the Postmaster's House.

Following the tradition, Samson Vyrin - one of the main characters of Aleksandr Pushkin's "Tales of Belkin" - acquired his family name from the name of this village. It was here, at this modest post station that Aleksandr Pushkin, using this road many times on the way to his family village of Mikhailovskoye, heard a sad story about a paltry man and his daughter and wrote the story "Postmaster".

Local people say that it was in Vyra that the character of the story Samson Vyrin lived and was buried and it was from here that his beautiful daughter Dunya was carried off by a travelling hussar. The archival documents confirm that once there lived a postmaster having a daughter.

Aleksandr Pushkin travelled a lot - he made as much as 34 thousand kilometers along Russian roads. In his story "Postmaster" his character says: " For twenty years running I have crossed Russia in all directions; nearly all post roads are known to me; several generations of coachmen are acquaintances of mine, there was a rare keeper I didn't know by sight, there were rare ones I didn't deal with."

Slow travelling along post roads with long "sitting" at the stations was quite an event for Pushkin's contemporaries providing them with ideas and facts later transformed into stories and poems by some of them. Pyotr Vyazemsky, Fyodor Glinka, Aleksandr Radishchev, Nikolai Karamzin, Aleksandr Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov are among the names.

"Clean Section for Travellers" recreates "a humble but tidy abode" for a postmaster and his daughter. Travelling trunks, suitcases, "a bed with a multicolored curtain", flower pots on window-sills, cheap prints on the walls… It seems that in a minute the host "dressed in the long green frock coat, with three medals on the faded ribbons" will enter the door and tell his daughter Dunya - a blue-eyed beauty - to make the samovar ready.

The rules and decrees regulating mail service of those days are posted on the walls. They assign how many horses can be harnessed to a carriage of an official of a certain rank, determine the contents of post-horse orders and taxes on them, inform of the changing horses hours etc.

One can see a bronze candle-stick, an ink-stand with a goose-quill, a register book on the table of the postmaster standing in the "sacral" corner of the room where an icon with an icon-lamp is traditionally placed. Another rarity - a copy of the post-horse order for Aleksandr Pushkin of May 5, 1820 saying that he was sent to the South Territories of Russia "for business purposes" - lies on the table.

A money-box of the middle of the 19th century, various travellers' belongings (wooden boxes, leather travelling bags, a top-hat case etc.) are also on display.

A room "behind the partition" recreates a maiden's room interior: a couch, a dowry trunk, a needle-work table, a chest of drawers. Flower pots with balsam - the favourite flower of Dunya, the station keeper daughter - are still on the window-sills. The portraits on the walls of Dunya and her beloved hussar are stylized as amateur album drawings of Pushkin times (by artist N. Berlovich, 1972).

"The Coachmen Section" of the house served the resting place for drivers. A good part of the room is occupied by a Russian stove used both for heating and cooking. Up on the stove and on the roomy wooden berth coachmen were sleeping side by side after exhausting rides. The harness for carriage-horses and sheepskin coats and caps of coachmen are hanging on the wall hooks.

The stable interior adds to the idea of everyday life of coachmen. One can see the harness (breast-bands, horse collars, shaft-bows) and a phaeton of the 19th century here. In the early 19th century 55 post horses were kept in Vyra and the stablemen, being on round-the-clock service, had a special room next to the stable.

There are several other buildings in the courtyard.

In 1988 a minor exhibit was opened in the smithy used for shoeing of horses and manufacturing of carriage details. A visitor can view a forge and bellows, some forging and tools used by a blacksmith.

The well and tethering posts with troughs to water horses are located in the center of the yard.

The fire-tower houses the exhibit showing fire-brigades operation in the early 20th century. Beginning from 1905, a voluntary fire-brigade consisting of local peasants was arranged at the Vyra post station. In case of a fire a fire spotter rang a bell. Fire equipment that was fixed on the special fire carts is now on view.

Visitors can also see the items donated to the museum. Using the funds open storage approach, they are exhibited as a special display rather than kept in a closed store-room. There are travelling boxes, copper samovars and kettles, a potato masher, troughs cut out of trunks, wooden utensils, a traveller's wardrobe suitcase and many other artifacts among them.