Kolomenskoye Museum Estate

Kolomenskoye is a former royal residence and ancestral lands, a village near Moscow.  Nowadays it is the State Historical, Architectural, and Natural Landscape Museum-Estate. Kolomenskoye is located to the south of the center of Moscow.

Kolomenskoye is one of the most ancient human settlements on the territory of modern Moscow. Archaeological sites, located in the vicinity, indicate of stay here people of the Stone Age (V-III centuries BC).

In 1923, based on the historical architectural ensemble of the country estate of Russian grand dukes and tsars, there was founded a small museum, which turned later into an architectural and art museum-estate Kolomenskoye, with an area of 254.6 hectares. 

Kolomenskoye is a complex monument of the history and culture of Russia. The complex consists of 17 monuments, 12 of them are remains of the architectural ensemble of the royal estates of the XVI-XIX centuries, 4 monuments are wooden buildings brought from various regions of Russia. In recent years, Kolomenskoye actively formed an architectural and ethnographic complex: there appeared functional stables and a smithy, a mansion with an apiary beekeeper and a water mill. 

At various times, there were brought monuments of wooden architecture of the XVII-XVIII centuries in Kolomenskoye, which were set in the ancient Ascension Garden. There were also set a number of wooden constructions: the Holy Gate of the Nicholas-Karelian monastery of 1693 brought from the shore of the White Sea, the Fraternity Tower of the middle of the XVII century brought from the area of the Bratsk hydroelectric station, the Memorial House of Peter I of 1702 from Arkhangelsk. The first structure set in Kolomenskoye near the Front Gate was the household building of the Transfiguration Palace of the XVIII century. 

Since 2003, a complex program of the development of the museum has been carried out in Kolomenskoye and adjacent areas. In the course of its implementation, there were restored the Church of the Ascension — the monument included in the list of the world-historical and cultural heritage sites of UNESCO, as well as the complex of the Front Gate, the Palace Pavilion of 1825, the Bell Tower, and the Church of St. George.