Kizhi Island Pier

The current concrete pier replaced the floating debarkader that once stood by this shore. Its cramped structure contained a waiting room, a shop, a post office, and a restaurant. The debarkader was removed in the two thousands, while the shore-side area with its permanent pier remained part of the island's museum infrastructure.

Ships disembark passengers here from Petrozavodsk, from the mainland shore, and from cruise ships. In the pier area, tickets are sold, belongings are left, and tour groups are assembled. This arrangement is necessary because people arrive on the island by the dozens and hundreds at once: before they reach the wooden monuments, this flow must be received and divided among routes.

When Kizhi Architectural Reserve officially opened to visitors in nineteen fifty-five, the entire reception service consisted of one tour guide and two on-duty police officers. A steamer docked directly opposite Kizhi Pogost. Seventeen years later, the museum had already received more than one hundred thousand people in a season. A floating debarkader was installed near the pier, simultaneously housing a waiting room, a shop, a post office, and a restaurant, but even that proved insufficient.

In September nineteen seventy-nine, Lyudmila Vasilievna Lopatkina-Shilova became director of the museum. She had to organize the reception of passenger ships and take responsibility for the wooden ensemble, whose condition caused specialists serious concern. The director lived in an old service house on the island and later recalled that she sometimes woke in the night and went out to check whether the Church of the Transfiguration was still standing.

Lopatkina-Shilova ensured that shipping operators, the tour service, and the island facilities coordinated their work with one another. During her directorship, a concrete passenger pier and a fire station were built: arriving groups were given their own space, and fire engines and equipment were given theirs. The system outlasted her directorship and determined the present arrangement of the entrance area.

The floating debarkader with its post office and restaurant was removed in the two thousands. The concrete pier remained; in two thousand twenty-three, its supports began to undergo major repairs for the first time in more than four decades. Passenger ships still dock in front of it, and behind it begins the area where arrivals are assigned to island routes.