Some houses are more than walls. This is one of them.
The old wooden gate at 16 Tsar Osvoboditel Street in Shumen opens wide, and at the far end of the yard, in the shade of an ancient walnut tree, stands a beautiful National Revival house. Among the dense boxwood and ivy, spring water murmurs quietly from the large stone fountain. The nearly two-hundred-year-old walnut and the well in front of the veranda are the same witnesses to the boisterous childhood and thoughtful youth of the Shumen hero.
It was here that the young Panayot Volov’s bright dreams and bold revolutionary plans took shape. More than once, secret committee meetings were held on this spot.
The story of the house
The family of Vicho and Vasilka Volov first lived in a handsome two-storey house on the saddlers’ market street, today’s Slavyanski Boulevard. Their first two children, Stefania and Panayot, were born there. In the 1860s the master shoemaker Vicho Volov was among the dozens of ruined Shumen craftsmen, and this forced the family to move to the poorer Choban quarter, at the very edge of town.
The house dates from the end of the 18th century and is the oldest surviving building in Shumen. It became a museum in 1966, and in 1976, for the centenary of the April Uprising, an exhibition hall was built beside it.
The domestic exhibition
The complex consists of the domestic exhibition inside the house – Kashti (living room), Peshti (kitchen) and Soba (bedroom) – and a separate exhibition hall. Original objects recreate the setting in which Volov spent his childhood and youth. Everything is arranged as it stood 150 years ago.
The exhibition hall
The heart of the museum’s display is Volov’s role as chief apostle of the IV Revolutionary District and his tireless work preparing and leading the April Uprising. Views of the towns and villages of the revolt, portraits of the April heroes, documents and precious relics are shown in dedicated cases.
The exhibition also covers his years of study – at the Dolnomahlensko school under Iliya R. Blaskov, at the Mutual and the Boys’ secondary schools under Todor Ikonomov and Dobri Voynikov, and later in Nikolaev, Russia. Among the most revealing sources for the young man’s developing ideology are the letters he wrote to his uncle Marincho Benli and to the voivode Panayot Hitov.
Museum education
The memorial complex has long been a place of museum education. The work with preschool teachers has been most fruitful in the theme of “Traditions and Holidays”: in a museum setting, children encounter the meaning, elements and symbols of Christmas, Lazarus Saturday, Palm Sunday, Easter and Enyovden, and interpret them creatively.
Here they also discover “The life of the old Bulgarians” – an authentic National Revival interior, folklore and folk applied art. The workshop on the Shumen folk costume draws particular interest, as children work with stencilling and decorative appliqué.
The most effective formats have proved to be the open “lessons in patriotism”, the quizzes, the commemorations and the multimedia lesson “Patriotic Bulgarians”.
Partners
The museum works with the Local History Society, the Military Club, the Garrison Museum, the reading rooms across the region, the Regional Library, the Traditsiya regional club and the Krum Strashniy patriotic committee, founded at the house-museum itself, as well as with departments of the Shumen Regional Administration and the Culture, Education and Youth Directorate of Shumen Municipality.
The joint museum–school–reading room programmes have been especially productive. In this way the Panayot Volov House-Museum fulfils its most important purpose: to educate and raise the culture of its visitors by introducing them to the values held in the rich cultural and historical heritage of the Shumen region.
