Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography – best known as the Kunstkammer Museum – was founded by Russia’s first emperor in 1718. The riverside museum was built in 1734 and again two decades later after a fire. The collection of over one million artifacts portrays the culture of Russia plus several countries. The museum’s macabre highlight is the Natural Sciences Collection. The name belies this assortment of 1,100 deformed human and animal fetuses and body parts floating in glass jars. These anatomical curiosities were a passion for Peter I.
