Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve

Kolomenskoye is a former palace village and country residence of the tsars on the bank of the Moskva River, now a museum-reserve of Russian wooden architecture in the south of the capital. The village is first mentioned in the 1339 testament of Ivan Kalita — the oldest surviving will of the Moscow grand princes. In the 17th century, beginning with Tsar Mikhail Fyodorovich, Kolomenskoye became the favorite summer residence of the Russian sovereigns, and in 1662 it was here that rebels of the Copper Riot came to confront Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.

Kolomenskoye's principal architectural monument is the Church of the Ascension, laid down in 1532 by Vasily III to mark the birth of his son, the future Ivan the Terrible, to a design by the Italian architect Petrok Maly; it was here, in 1564, that Ivan IV, on completing a two-week pilgrimage, announced the establishment of the oprichnina. The tented church, one of the first stone tented churches in Russia, is included on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In 1666 Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich built a wooden palace of more than 270 rooms at Kolomenskoye, which contemporaries called the eighth wonder of the world; it was here that his son, the future Peter I, spent his childhood, staging the maneuvers of his "toy troops" on the estate. In 1767, already under Catherine II, Alexei Mikhailovich's dilapidated palace was dismantled, and a new stone-and-wood building was erected in its place.

The Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve was founded on 10 October 1923 on the initiative of the restoration architect Pyotr Baranovsky, who succeeded in establishing an open-air museum of wooden architecture here. Monuments of wooden architecture were brought here from across the country — the gate tower of the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery, the Mokhovaya Tower of the Sumsky Fort, the tower of Bratsky Fort, and Peter I's cabin from near Arkhangelsk. In the 1960s Kolomenskoye was incorporated into the city of Moscow. Active development of the neighboring district of Nagatino in the 1960s–1970s nearly led to highways being routed through the reserve's territory, which was avoided thanks to the efforts of Baranovsky and other defenders of the monument. In 2010 Alexei Mikhailovich's palace was recreated on its historic site — a complex of 26 towers with 270 rooms and more than three thousand windows. Today Kolomenskoye is part of the Moscow State United Museum-Reserve and remains one of the principal places where the heritage of Russian wooden architecture is preserved.