The Natural and History Museum of the City of Bendery

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Currently Bendery Museum is involved with an exciting international project related to water. Working with Eco-TIRAS International Environmental Association of Dniester River Keepers in Chisinau and the River Keepers of Fargo-Moorhead in the USA, as well as with the Leo Berg Foundation (Bendery) we obtained funding to work with the Roger Ehnstrom Nature Center (RENC) in Wahpeton, North Dakota, USA. The funding came from the American Association of Museums in Washington D.C., USA. The funds will be used to improve the skills of both our museums in several areas. Learning from each other we will increase our capabilities to utilize volunteers in the operation of our museums. We will learn those skills through mutual site visits and the use of internet communications. Each of our museums will develop a display on the river that flows by the other countries museum. So we will develop a display on the Red River of the North which flows by the RENC. The RENC will develop a display about the Dniester River. Both rivers are international rivers, touching more than one country.

The Department of History

The exposition by the Department of History is arranged by topic in chronological order and covers the period from the moment the city was settled by ancient people to the present. It is a collection which includes instruments of labour from an epoch of the late Paleolithic period, bronze axes from around 2000 B.C., a collection of pottery from the Chernyakhovsk culture of the 2nd century A.D., Slavic fighting axes from the 9th-10th centuries A.D., medieval weapons, rare samples of weapons from the Russian-Turkish wars of the 18th and 19th centuries, pig-iron kettles, copperware, Turkish pipes, and items from the 20th century.

Illustrious and important components included in the exposition are: reconstruction of the Cro-Magnon people's lifestyle (creators E. Shikov and I. Trochin)

Breadboard model of the Bendery Fortress (the author is G. Zykov),

In 1709 Swedish king Karl XII and Ukrainian hetman Mazepa ran away from the Poltava battle field. They hurried to Bendery - the territory of the Turkish Empire.

But the Turks didn't invite the fugitives into the Bendery fortress but advised them to inhabit near it. Karl XII built three camp-towns both on the left and right banks of the Dniester during his staying in Bendery. One of them was called Karlopolis. The last one in the village Varnitsa the king named "My new Stockholm" because of nostalgia.

The rest of Swedish and Cossack troops - about 10 thousand men - lived there.

Hopelessly sick and despaired Mazepa didn't want to inhabit "Stockholm". He preferred the peasant's house in Varnitsa. On the September 22, 1709 he had died.

Karl XII ruled Sweden from Bendery for whole three years. At last the Turks decided to get rid of him.

They assaulted the house where Karl XII locked with 300 devoted soldiers. The king was captured, tired, sent to Adrianople, then home.

The Karl's portrayal was left at the old emblem of Bendery. He is depicted as a lion with a human face. This is the unique case in the world heraldic practice.

Diorama Storm of the Bendery Fortress by Russian army in 1770 (creators G. Zykov, and Н. Dmitrienko)	Diorama Speeding up of the Dniester River by the Soviet army around Varnitsky base. April, 1944 (creator N. Dmitrienko),
Reproduction "Sewing shop. 1944 ",	Fragment of an interior of a worker's room at the beginning of the 1950s, etc.

Sovetskaya str., 40, Bendery, MD3200, Pridnestrovie, Moldova. tel. +373-552-28839, [email protected]
© 2009 The Natural and History Museum of the City of Bendery