Guilan Rural Heritage Museum

 house, village, open air museum, interesting place

The rural museums are a subset of open air museum reflecting the rural civilization and culture in a natural environment. These museums form through transferring the real scale buildings in a location similar to the primary place.
Guilan Rural Heritage Museum is under construction in a 263 ha land, in Saravan forest park located on km 18 of Rasht- Tehran road. The idea of establishing the museum was formed after June 1991 Guilan earthquake in which the destruction of the traditional buildings was intensified. The primary phase of the project was completed in Spring 2002.
First, a broad study was implemented to find a proper location. After doing many researches, Saravan forest park was selected because of having a proper topography similar to Guilan’s, easy access and infrastructure facilities. At the same time, the human resources training was implemented.
After completion, this village would be a small but real sample of the traditional life style and culture of Guilan’s villages.
The architecture section of the Museum is a collection of some 150 year old buildings. The objective of the Museum is not just transferring the rural buildings but is preservation of local culture, construction techniques and unwritten knowledge living in villages of Guilan. In this collection, besides the rural architecture of different regions of the province, other cultural elements of life and work tools, food, costumes, etc would be exhibited. Within the site different places are assigned for restaurants, teashops, bazaars, mosques, farms, tea farms, rice farms, handicrafts training and production shops (e.g. pot-making, pottery, different kinds of sewing techniques), a space for traditional games and plays (e.g. Gilemardi wrestling, bull fighting, acrobatics), agricultural and animal husbandry research center, architecture and anthropology research center, kids park, Medicinal plants gardens, native trees, recreation camp, international wood architecture, two guest-house complex inspired by rural architecture each one including 150 houses with the capacity of 3-5 persons.
The procedure of transferring the buildings is as follows:
First, a group of experts are sent to villages to select the buildings. The valuable buildings are identified and studied. The studies are based on anthropology and architecture. After the completion of the studies, the building is mapped and numbered to make the reconstruction possible. After disassembling the building and transferring it to the Museum, the building is reassembled over there. The area of the Museum complex is about 45 ha located at the central core of the site.
In May 2001, the first workshop of the project (eastern plain village) began to work and was inaugurated one year later. In May 2008 the second phase (central plain village) began to work and at the same time the third phase (western plain village) was clicked. In Sep of the same year the fourth phase (western mountainside village) began. In June 2009 the fifth and sixth phases (eastern mountainside and western mountain villages) embarked on and the Researchers' House was inaugurated. At the same time, the seventh phase (Eastern mountain village) and the construction of the central plain school workshop started. In May 2011 two residential complexes (Behzadi, Jame') in the eastern mountainside village and two residential complexes (Haghighati, Hasani) in the western plain village were inaugurated.