The Russian author Varlam Shalamov was born in Vologda and in 1907 and he lived up until 1924 in the two-storey house next to St Sophia's Cathedral, which is now a house-museum in his honour. Shalamov is most famous for his writings known as The Kolyma Tales about the time he spent in a Gulag camp in the Russian North. The museum was opened in 1991 and displays information on the author and his work as well as some personal belongings. The second floor of the museum houses an exhibition centre of the Vologda Museum-Reserve.