Nature and Ecology Museum is a branch of Polotsk National Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve. Its exhibition is located in the building of the former water tower, an architectural monument of the 20th century. It is also included in the List of Historical and Cultural Values of the Republic of Belarus.
The water tower was built in 1953. The main building material is silicate brick. The main entrance is decorated with stylized elements of the order system. The diameter of the foundation of the outer walls is 10.5 m, the total height of the tower is 32.7 m. The water tower performed its main technical function until the mid-1980s. The restoration and adaptation of the building to a museum began in the early 1990. The architectural appearance of the building has been changed somewhat. So, on the north side, a metal descent with a glazed facade was attached; its upper platform is used as a lookout.
One of the initiators of the museum creation was Nikolai Nikolaevich Ilnitsky, who was the head of Polotsk National Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve at the time. The creation of an environmental museum was especially relevant for the Polotsk region with its difficult environmental situation since several of the country's largest chemical industry enterprises are located here (Steklovolokno, Naftan, Polymir, etc.). The museum, as a kind of bridge linking nature and man together, was supposed to make you think about the environment, about what we will leave behind.
The museum is the result of a fruitful collaboration of a large number of people. The author of the scientific concept of the museum was a staff member of Polotsk National Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve Nadezhda Bezprozvannaya. Her idea was the best fit for implementation in a building with such a unique historical and architectural focus. Four levels of the exposition, connected by an internal staircase of the tower, take the visitor from the landscapes of native nature through the technogenic expanses of a modern city to an ecological crisis of a planetary scale and present the ways to overcome it. Climbing to the very top under the dome of the tower, everyone can feel the true harmony of Man and the Universe. According to the idea of the author, a planetarium was supposed to be located here, but this idea has not yet been implemented. The artistic solution and its implementation was crried out by the team of designers led by Belarusian artist Vladimir Shappo. Assistance in the implementation of the project was provided by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Belarus, researchers and taxidermists of the Department of Ecology of Vitebsk State Museum named after P.M. Masherov, photographers Igor Byshnev and Igor Supranenok.
In general, it took almost 15 years for the reconstruction and repair of the water tower, the acquisition and decoration of the museum. The grand opening took place on September 3, 2005, on the day of the III Republican Eco-Forum and the II International Ecological Festival in Polotsk. The opening was attended by the Minister of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Belarus Leonty Khoruzhik, heads of the executive committees of Polotsk and Novopolotsk.
There is a landscape garden next to the museum, where in 2006, on the anniversary of the museum opening, a sculpture "Fish in the Sun Rays" was installed, symbolizing the unity of man with nature. Its author is Vladimir Slobodchikov, Honored Artist of the Republic of Belarus.