No. 1, 2004

The ancient village of Kolomenskoye, first mentioned in a chronicle dating back to 1339, is situated in picturesque surroundings on the steep, high banks of the Moskva river. From the 14th century on, Kolomenskoye was the summer residence of the czars. A unique architectural ensemble of great artistic and historical value evolved there during the 16th and 17th centuries. It is a unique historical place held sacred by the Russian people. In the 1920s, the first museum exhibition was opened there; today, the place is a state artistic, historico-architectural and natural-scenery museum-reserve called simply "Kolomenskoye."

Some of its architectural monuments have been included by UNESCO in the List of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. One of these monuments is the Church of the Ascension built in 1532 at the bidding of Great Moscowian Prince Vasily III. According to a legend, the church was built to celebrate the birth of his son, the future czar Ivan the Terrible. Another traditional story says that on March 2, 1917, the day the Russian emperor Nicholas II abdicated, the Church of the Ascension was the scene of a miraculous apparition of the icon of the Reigning Mother of God. That church is the oldest hipped-roof stone structure that gave rise to a new distinctive architectural style which became widespread in Russia in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Many of the unique museum pieces were brought to Kolomenskoye from various corners of Russia.

For instance, a wooden pyramid-shaped watchtower of the St. Nicholas Monastery in Karelia, which was built back in 1692, was brought here from the shores of the White Sea in 1932. The unique structure is one of the few remaining examples of northern Russia's fortification architecture.

In 1934, the open-air museum received a new exhibit, "Peter the Great's hut," a small house in which the legendary Russian emperor lived in 1702 when he supervised the construction of the Novodvinskaya fortress which was being built in the Northern Dvina estuary.

In 1959, yet another monument of wooden architecture was installed in Kolomenskoye – the watchtower of the Bratsk fort built by the Cossacks in 1652 on the Angara river near what is the city of Irkutsk today. This inaccessible fort, which was also used as a jail, in the second half of the 17th century was the place of incarceration of the well-known old believer Archpriest Avvakum.

These are only some of the unique architectural and historical monuments on the grounds of the Kolomenskoye museum-reserve, each of which has a place of its own in glorious Russian history.

Besides being an open-air museum, Kolomenskoye is also a natural-scenery reserve spreading on both banks of the Moskva river. In the central part of the estate there is a picturesque park with an alley of old lindens planted in the early 19th century. But the pride of the reserve is a grove of ancient oaks, the oldest in Moscow: some of them are between 400 and 600 years old.

The village of Kolomenskoye, once a country residence of Russian princes and czars, is associated with traditional stories and legends reminiscent of famous Russia's rules: Dmitry Donskoy, Ivan the Terrible, Emperor Peter the Great, Catherine II, Alexander I and others.

Muscovites are fond of spending their free time in Kolomenskoye, strolling about its shady park in a Moskva river bend, and feasting their eyes on the natural beauty of the surroundings and the grandeur of the architectural monuments – the silent witnesses of Russian history.