#Exhibit of the Month

The Chișinău Diocesan Girls' School opened its doors on May 3, 1864, addressing a pressing need: in Bessarabia there were no institutions dedicated to the education of clergy's daughters. According to the 1864 circular, teaching was conducted in the Romanian language, a provision applied throughout the diocese. The school's first headmistress was Anastasia Rizo, of noble origin, invited by Archbishop Antonie.

The curriculum, approved by the Ministry of Public Education and the Chișinău Diocese, combined theoretical subjects with practical training. Students studied religion, reading and writing in Romanian, Slavonic, and Russian, arithmetic and exercises in calculation, world history and geography. The program was complemented by church singing and practical skills such as sewing, embroidery, knitting, as well as household management - baking bread and prosphora, preparing meals and preserves, caring for livestock, and cultivating gardens.

The composite, taken in 1911 at the studio of Z. N. Sumovski in Chișinău, depicts 29 graduates and 13 teachers. At the center are portraits of Bishop Serafim (Ciciagov), headmistress N. R. Mihelson, teacher V. E. Bejerian, and priests F. Ghiliarov and P. Jurikas. Among the teaching staff was Paraskovia Vasilievna Cuciurenko, a calligraphy teacher for 37 years, who in 1911 became senior educator and assistant headmistress. For her dedication, she was awarded the gold medal "For Long Service."

On the reverse of the vignette is a label from the store and workshop of frames, paintings, mirrors, and window glass owned by A. D. Kon'gova, Chișinău, Gogol Street no. 37, near the State Bank.

This graduation composite was donated at the end of 2025 to the National Museum of History of Moldova by the Dadiștian family from Drochia.

Virtual Tour

Exhibitions

''Early Cattle-breeders’ Communities in the Prut-Dniester Area (Aeneolithic – Iron Age)''

(October 14, 2010 – October 14, 2011)

The exhibition presents to the public for the first time the collection of archaeological items discovered in burial mounds belonged to the early cattle-breeders’ communities which came to this area from the east in the 2nd half of the 5th millennium B.C. These communities lived in the Prut-Dniester area between 4,300 and 800 B.C., bringing with them new way of life, new social structures, new materials (such as bronze and glass).

These more than 380 exhibits (vessels, tools, weapons, and adornments made of clay, bone, stone, flint, glass, shells, and bronze) reflect the traditional occupations in the cattle-breeders’ communities. The most of the presented exhibits are pottery which let trace the main changes occurred as a result of interaction between the early cattle-breeders’ communities and local sedentary agricultural communities.

The most significant exhibits are: a hoe of horn, bronze axes and daggers, bronze sickles found near the Dancu village, stone moulds for bronze weapons.