Kolomenskoye

Kolomenskoye is a museum-reserve and former tsarist residence in south-eastern Moscow, on a high bank of the Moskva River. The grounds cover about 390 hectares and border the Nagatinsky Zaton district; the nearest metro station is Kolomenskaya. Kolomenskoye became part of Moscow in the 1960s. The ensemble's main building, the Church of the Ascension, has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1994.

History

The village of Kolomenskoye has been known since the 14th century, but its heyday came in the 16th-17th centuries, when a summer residence for Moscow's rulers was built here. The Church of the Ascension, built in 1532, is the estate's first stone tent-roofed building, made of white stone. Nearby, in the village of Dyakovo, stands the Church of St John the Baptist, built around 1547; according to a common attribution, its architect was Postnik Yakovlev, who later built Saint Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. One of the church's five tent-like towers, known as the "White Column", is sometimes linked to the birth of Ivan the Terrible's heir, though this is a legend rather than an established fact.

In the 17th century, Tsar Alexis I had the earlier wooden buildings demolished and a new, great wooden palace built at Kolomenskoye. Peter the Great spent part of his childhood and youth here. In 1709 the future Empress Elizabeth was born in the Kolomenskoye palace. In 1768 Catherine the Great ordered the dilapidated palace torn down and replaced with a more modest stone-and-brick building, which was itself demolished in 1872.

During the Soviet period Kolomenskoye became a museum-reserve: wooden buildings and monuments from various parts of the USSR were brought here for preservation, including Peter the Great's log house. According to tradition, this wooden house originally stood on Markov Island in the Northern Dvina delta near Arkhangelsk, by the Novodvinskaya Fortress, and survived precisely because of its connection to Peter's name. Inside it holds a marble bust of Peter I by the Italian sculptor Carlo Albacini, made in the 1760s.

What to see

Besides the Ascension Church and Peter the Great's house, the grounds preserve the Church of St George the Victorious with its bell tower, the brick Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, completed between 1662 and 1670 and consecrated on 27 November 1670, and the Vodovzvodnaya (water-raising) Tower. Together with the protected landscape above the Moskva River, these buildings make up the museum's main ensemble.

Getting there

The entrance to the grounds is from Kolomenskaya metro station, from where a footpath leads to the estate's ceremonial Palace (Front) Gates.