The State Museum of the History of Religion in St. Petersburg has opened an exhibition "Journey to Morocco", dedicated to the activities of the Russian explorer Konstantin Vyazemsky. The exhibition presents materials from the archive of the Russian Geographical Society.
The famous Russian traveler Prince Konstantin Vyazemsky visited Morocco exactly 140 years ago – in 1881. He became the first Russian to visit not only Tangier, but also the inner regions of the country. The exhibition project of the St. Petersburg Museum of Islamic Culture is dedicated to this journey.
Konstantin Vyazemsky came from an old princely family. He received an excellent education, and throughout his life carried a love of travel. He, mainly on horseback, spent 16 years traversing more than 300 thousand kilometers along the roads of Russia, Western Europe, Africa and Asia.
The exhibition project is based on the work of the travel photographer, researcher at Ural Federal University Stanislav Beloglazov. The most interesting stories tell about the unique culture of the East, a world unfamiliar to a European, in which centuries-old traditions are still alive.
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The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalog containing the travel diary of Prince Vyazemsky. Now this artifact is kept at the library of the Russian Geographical Society.
"... I suppose the purpose of my life is travelling. Everyone has their own preferences: some are chasing ranks, some are striving for profit, and some are, like me, exploring the globe in its different parts with all the peculiarities," the words of Konstantin Vyazemsky are quoted in the exhibition catalog.
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The exhibition, in the preparation of which a member of the Ethnographic Commission of the RGS Efim Rezvan took part, allows the viewer to compare the impressions transmitted to descendants by the first Russian explorers and the photographs of our contemporary. The exhibition will be open to visitors until December 11, 2021.