The exhibition deployed in the visitors' area is dedicated to the history of naval artillery.
One of the oldest exhibits of the museum is a harquebus cast in 1618. Similar harquebuses were installed on the first European type ship Oryol built in Russia and set afloat in 1668.
The 1692 gun bears the emblem of the Ukrainian hetman I.S. Mazepa who until 1709 took part in the Great Northern War on the side of Russia.
From the XVI until the mid XIX century smoothbore artillery was applied in the fleet, various types of charges used. The firing range was not great, for a naval battle of the period implied close approach of adversaries. On swaying decks of rowing and sailing ships the targeting was low.
Notable specimens are the 1706 Olonets gun (such were usually mounted on galleys), and the 1719 gun cast in St. Petersburg from copper surrendered by Finland.
The period from the mid XVIII to the mid XIX century is called "the golden age of the Russian fleet". It was already in the 1750s, during the reign of Elizabeth of Russia, that a giant leap in the development of naval artillery was made which established the dominance of the Russian fleet for a fairly long period to come.
In 1756, artillery officers M.V. Danilov and M.G. Martynov developed the "licornes", fundamentally new howitzers having a higher destructive power and precision, adapted to the use in the front in the fleet. Due to the conical chamber licornes conducted fired accurately. They were charged with any missiles (balls, bombs, buckshot, brandskugels) and weighed less.
Invented in Scotland in the late XVIII century, carronade guns, along with licornes, were the foundation of the naval artillery of Russia until the mid XIX century.
Here you can see various artillery and signaling accessories, as well as a rare Kosakovsky experimental gun that was never army-accepted.
By the mid XIX century smoothbore guns were replaced with rifled guns weapons with fundamentally different parameters. An instance of experiments with a breech mechanism and a rifling inside the barrel can be seen in the gum from the imperial yacht "Derzhava" army-accepted in 1873.
Also an unusual exhibit should be noted, a small one-pound licorne gun made in the 1840s for the Marine Cadet Corps.
At the center there is a sculpture by M.M. Antokolsky depicting Peter the Great, the founder of the Russian regular fleet, as the inscription on the pedestal reads: "For the marine vessels to be".
If you go up the ramp along the stylized board of our "ship", you can see a few samples of the ship's accoutrements: ships’ figureheads and stern boards.
Stern moldings depicting animals belonged to the so-called "animal squadron" consisting of screw corvettes: "Udav" (meaning Constrictor), "Rys" (meaning Lynx), "Volk" (meaning Wolf), "Vol" (meaning Ox), "Buyvol" (meaning Buffalo), "Medved" (meaning Bear) and "Zubr" (meaning Bison). These stern moldings were manufactured in the workshop of Peter Klodt. This sculptor also authored the figurehead of the corvette "Vityaz" set afloat in 1862. Also the figureheads of the corvette "Bogatyr" and armored frigate "Knyaz Pozharsky" wrought by M.O. Mikeshin, as well as the trophy figurehead “Lion” from the Turkish vessel of the period of the Russian-Turkish war of 1827-1828 are presented.
In the small atrium the specimens of armaments and equipment of XX century ships are displayed.
Ship technical instruments are presented by a rangefinder ДМ-3, and a 9-meter periscope from a submarine Щ-303 which during the Great Patriotic War was under the command of G.S. Travkin who wrecked 2 ships and 12 transports.
The state emblems which adorned Soviet battleships, as well as the bell from the battleship "Marat" are notable.
At the foot of the ramp there are several interesting specimens of armaments of the 1950s: a 14.5 mm Vladimirov twin-barreled machine gun for boats and ships of small displacements, and an experimental rocket launcher C-30, which was never army-accepted.
At the opposite wall there is a ballistic missile Р-11ФМР fired for the first time from a submarine in 1955, and a mine and torpedo antisubmarine weapon system МТПК-1 army-accepted in 1981.