The Emperor Nicholas II Autograph Museum, the only museum of this kind in Russia, was founded in Novosibirsk in 1988. The Museum is named after the last Russian emperor, as Novosibirsk owes its appearance on the world map to Nicholas II. In 1903 the emperor issued a decree giving Novosibirsk (at the time it was a village called Novo-Nikolayevsk) a status of a city and, until 1926, it was named after its founder (Novo-Nikolayevsk).

    The main aim of our museum is to collect and preserve specimens of handwriting of outstanding people, such as prominent cultural figures of Russia and whole world as well as politicians who had a considerable impact on the world history.

    We hope that the images of people belonging to various historical epochs, cultures and nations will help us to create a collective portrait of mankind. Although our museum is called ?The Autograph Museum¦, we do not collect just signatures; our collection consists of photos with signatures. The handwriting style together with the picture of a person on a photo form a single visual image and become an excellent visual guide to the cultural and national features of the country the person belongs to. All together the photos accumulated in our collection provide an opportunity to visualize, so to speak, the visage of all mankind, and in the most various aspects, such as racial, linguistic, aesthetic, political, etc., since the plainest photo with an autograph may have a huge amount of information. These are the philosophical foundations of our work.

    The Museum collection mainly presents the autographs of famous political and public leaders of today: presidents and prime ministers, constitutional monarchs of Europe and heads of theocratic Asian states, charismatic leaders of popular movements and heads of religious faiths. All autographs exhibited in the Museum are authentic (original) and personal (i.e., they are not a typographical or any other reproduction of the original). The overwhelming majority of the autographs have been donated to the Museum personally by their authors.

    Today we aspire to extend the boundaries of our activity to somewhat get rid of the one-sided nature of our interests, and include not only people determining as it was the political physiognomy of world civilization, but also those who are building our spiritual and material culture: scientists, writers, actors, artists, sculptors, architects, etc.

    Our museum is purely a research institution and does not pursue any commercial goals. Please, do not apply with requests regarding sale of any of the museum items or their copies. We do not sell historical relics.

    A small amount of our exhibits is displayed on our website. The exposition is being constantly enriched.

    We would be thankful to everybody who helps us in obtaining new autographs