Regional Ethnographic Museum
Originally the Ethnographic Museum of Sakhalin was founded in 1896 in the Alexandrovsky post. However during the Russian-Japanese war, the building was destroyed. The museum was rebuilt and reopened in 1937 as the Karafuto Government Museum.
The building was designed in the Japanese style and has a few special features: lantern-shaped windows in the ceiling, portico at the entrance, Japanese decorations on the roof and sloping roof. It is the only Japanese-style building in Russia. On May 11, 1946 it was officially changed into the Regional Ethnographic Museum of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The collections stretch from ancient history to the present. They gather archeological, ethnographic, paleontological, geologic, botanic and zoological items, among many others.