Kolomenskoye, Moscow
More recently, Kolomenskoye was just a big park “for its own”, residents of the surrounding areas. Mothers with children walked here, schoolchildren ran in physical education classes, couples in love looking for solitude... In the operating church of the Kazan Mother of God they baptized, crowned, celebrated Easter and Christmas. The Church of the Ascension, the famous dominant of the Kolomna landscape, stood closed and looked as fragile as an unopened bud.
In recent years, much has changed. A lot of money is invested in the arrangement, restoration and promotion of Kolomna. Restoration forests have finally been removed from the Ascension Church, in the summer it is open to the public. Restored (or better said - built from scratch?) the wooden palace of Alexei Mikhailovich, completed the restoration of the Church of the Beheading of John the Forerunner in Dyakovo, actively engaged in the creation of the Ethnographic Center, regularly organize festivals and fairs (of which the most famous is the annual Honey Fair)...
Accordingly, there are more visitors in the park. Much more. On weekends, there is nowhere to park, although management has made free parking along the fences of the reserve. The number of new facilities in Kolomenskoye is increasing every year, and “local” complain that soon there will be no place for walking in the park.
A "non-local" may be surprised by the lack of proper infrastructure. Along the embankment, tents with expensive and tasteless food stretched out from the category of "sausages in the dough", there is no alternative to them. The park still has many bans: you cannot walk on lawns, ride bicycles, roller skates and skateboards, fly hang gliders and paragliders - although this is exactly what Muscovites do in Kolomenskoye, it would be easier to create the appropriate conditions.
Yet Kolomenskoye will always be a must-see place in Moscow. In addition to three dozens of architectural monuments, there are 15 nature monuments in the vast reserve area (390 hectares), including authentic historical landscapes, magnificent manor gardens and even the gloomy Golos ravine, sometimes called “stargate” - a mysterious and frightening place.
HISTORY
The Kolomenskoye Museum was founded in 1923 on the initiative of the famous restorer-architect Peter Dmitrievich Baranovsky, who became its first director. Since then, the protected area of ??Kolomna has grown to 390 hectares, and its name has become just as “extended”: the State Art Historical-Architectural and Natural Landscape Museum-Reserve. Kolomenskoye is included in the Moscow State United Museum-Reserve Kolomenskoye-Lefortovo-Lyublino-Izmailovo.
The unique landscape of Kolomna was formed over thousands of years. It was on the territory of Kolomenskoye, in Dyakovo, on the rounded flat-topped hill 2.5 thousand years ago, the oldest settlement on the territory of Moscow, the Dyakovo stronghold, which gave the name to archaeological culture, arose. But people lived here as early as the Stone Age: archaeological monuments located in the vicinity of Dyakovsky Hill date back to the 5th – 3rd millennia BC.
Recently, archeologists discovered settlements of the early Middle Ages (8th – 10th centuries) in the central part of Kolomna, as well as the unique settlement of Dyakovo-Poyma, an ancient Russian village of the 11th – 12th centuries at the foot of the same Dyakovsky hill.
Actually, the village of Kolomenskoye, located on the road from Moscow to Kolomna, was, according to legend, founded by the inhabitants of the city of Kolomna, who fled from Batu. The first written references to Kolomenskoye refer to the 14th century and are contained in spiritual documents of Ivan Kalita (1336 and 1339).
In the XIV century Kolomenskoye became the summer country estate of the Moscow rulers. According to historical sources, the troops of Dmitry Donskoy stayed here after the Battle of Kulikovo in 1380, squads of grand dukes of Moscow gathered in military campaigns, other events connected with the history of the Russian state took place.
The unique architectural ensemble of Kolomna established over the course of the 16th – 17th centuries, united by the general idea of ??a solemn royal residence.
Basil III, the father of Ivan the Terrible, built the famous tent church of the Ascension of the Lord here in 1528–1532. One of the first tent stone temples of Russia still towers on the high bank of the Moscow River. Since 1994, the Church of the Ascension has been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
In the same XVI century another amazing church was built in Dyakovo - the Beheading of John the Baptist. There is a version that this stone church, built in the middle of the XVI century, is a prototype of the Intercession Cathedral (St. Basil's Cathedral) in Red Square. The most courageous researchers even put forward the version that it was built by the same architects.
The most turbulent in the history of Kolomna was, perhaps, the XVII century. The beginning of the century did not foretell anything good: it was the Time of Troubles. In the summer of 1605, the army of False Dmitry I approached Moscow and stopped at Kolomenskoye. There was built a fortification in the form of a small town of tents, fenced with a wall with four towers and a gate. Moscow fell on June 20th. Outstanding Russian historian S.M. Solovyov wrote: “A false Dmitry recognized Serpukhov about the death of the Godunovs; on the road from this city to Moscow, he stopped for a few days in the village of Kolomenskoye and on June 20 drove solemnly into the capital...”. After reigning for about a year, the False Dmitry was killed by Muscovites who rebelled against foreigners.
At the end of October 1606, noble units led by Prokopy Lyapunov approached Moscow and stopped at Kolomenskoye, and then closer to Moscow - at Kotly. Soon the army of I. Bolotnikov occupied the territory of the Kolomna estate, pushing the noble units of Lyapunov to the Nikolo-Ugreshsky monastery. “And he conceived treason, and came under the ruling city of Moscow, and became in Kolomenskoye and Zaborje” - on December 2, during the battle of the Cauldrons, the noble forces moved to the side of the tsar. The defeated Bolotnikov went to Kolomenskoye and spent three days sitting in a jail, made up of hundreds of sledges, filled with water and hay and straw, frozen like stone.
In July 1610, the remnants of Bolotnikov’s army, led by the new impostor Lzhedmitry II, took advantage of the rout of the troops of Tsar Vasily Shuisky, approached Moscow and stood near Kolomna. In the camp of False Dmitry II was the spouse of the first impostor Marina Mnishek. However, in August, False Dmitry II retreated to Kaluga, where he was subsequently killed.
However, as soon as the Time of Troubles ended, and in the same XVII century Kolomenskoye estate began to turn into a magnificent country residence - thanks to Alexei Mikhailovich. At first the young tsar used Kolomenskoye for falconry, but he fell in love with the estate with his whole heart and constantly, for thirty years, came here for a summer holiday.
Under Alexei Mikhailovich, a stone church of the Kazan Icon of Our Lady was built. Over time, the functions of the house church were transferred to the Kazan Church; here, according to custom, the royal treasury and the most valuable property that was brought here during the summer holidays in the royal carts were kept.
Alexey Mikhailovich erected in the Kolomna “the eighth wonder of the world” - a unique wooden palace, which embodied all the best that wooden architecture had achieved by this time.
The historical core of Kolomensky - Gosudarev yard - was enclosed in part by a stone, partly wooden fencing with two entrance gates: the Front Gate, or the Palace Gate, - the main entrance to the royal estate and the Spassky, or the Back.
To the front gate of the Kolomna district adjoining the Order Chambers - the management of the estate. The Colonel's Chambers are the premises where the heads of the regiment guarding the palace were located, the Fryazhsky (Dry) cellar and the two-story building of the Nourishing Yard in which drinks were prepared for the royal table.
The son of Alexei Mikhailovich, the young Peter I often visited Kolomenskoye. Under Kolomenskoye, on the Kozhukhovskoye field, he organized the famous “funny battles”. But after the death of Alexei Mikhailovich and the transfer of the capital to St. Petersburg Kolomenskoye decay.
In the XVIII century, the wooden palace was completely dismantled, and on the bank of the Moskva River, next to the Church of the Ascension, a four-story palace was built, in which Empress Catherine II wrote her famous legal treatise, "Mandate". During the Napoleonic invasion, this palace was destroyed, and on its foundations, Emperor Alexander I ordered the construction of a new palace, which was built in 1825, in the Empire style. Unfortunately, this palace has not survived to our time.
In the 1920s of the last century, the remarkable Russian architect P.D. Baranovsky began to create Russia's first open-air museum of wooden architecture. At various times, wooden architecture of the XVII – XVIII centuries was brought to Kolomenskoye, which were placed mainly in the ancient Voznesensky garden. There were a number of wooden buildings from different regions of Russia: the Holy Gates of the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery in 1693 from the White Sea, the Bratsk tower of the mid-XVII century from the flood zone of the Bratsk Hydroelectric Station, the memorial house of Peter I in 1702 from Arkhangelsk.
The first building, installed in Kolomenskoye at the Front Gate, was an economic building of the Transfiguration Palace of the XVIII century, conventionally called Medovarny. In the House of Peter I posted an exhibition, reproducing the interiors of the royal marching, living rooms of the beginning of the XVIII century.
Since 2008, the complex of the Museum of Wooden Architecture in the open air has developed on the territory of the Kolomenskoye Museum-Preserve, including the travel tower of the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery, the Bratsk fortress tower and the Sumy fortress tower, which spent about 80 years in a disassembled form in the museum’s reserve storage facilities.
In 2010, the restoration of the Church of the Ascension and the Beheading of John the Baptist in Dyakove was completed. It is planned to reconstruct a part of the historical buildings of the village of Kolomna, which was lost in the late 1970s, and to place ethnographic exhibitions and expositions in the reconstructed homesteads.
In compiling the historical background, materials were used from the official site of the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve.
Legends
For a long time it was believed that the famous library of Ivan the Terrible may be located in the dungeons of the Church of the Beheading of John the Baptist. However, a large-scale reconstruction of the church was recently completed, and the royal book depository remained undiscovered.
On the territory of the reserve "Kolomenskoye" is one of the most mysterious places in Moscow - Golosov (Vlasov) ravine. It stretches from the Moscow River to Andropov Avenue, not far from the Church of the Beheading of John the Baptist. There are many legends about this place about strange green fog and movements in time and space.
Mysterious phenomena continue to observe the inhabitants of modern Kolomna. Our reader tan123vic writes: “My wife and I watched from our windows a column of greenish light from a ravine into the sky. The thickness of the pillar was about 10 meters - we estimated in comparison with the size of the temple of the Ascension. The pole narrowed slightly upward and disappeared in a few minutes. Apparently, this way the ancient inhabitants of Dyakovo settlement disappeared..."
The stream that flows at the bottom of the Golosovo ravine does not freeze even in cold weather, and in summer the water temperature in it does not rise above +4 degrees. This water is attributed to a life-giving force. Legend has it that springs feeding the trickle are traces of the hoofs of the horse of St. George the Victorious, who rode here many years ago with the news of victory over the serpent.
Here, at the bottom of the ravine, there are two huge boulders, which are also attributed to magical properties: one of them is called the Goose-stone - touching it gives men strength and courage in battle, the other - Girl Stone - brings happiness to women in personal life.
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