Razumovsky Estate

The Razumovsky Estate on the Yauza, also known as the estate at Gorokhovoye Pole, occupies a plot with a park of about 40 hectares on the riverbank in Moscow’s Basmanny District. This late 18th-century ensemble is one of the finest examples of Moscow estate classicism, and since 2015 the restored main house has housed the Museum of Physical Culture and Sport.

The estate on this site has been known since the 17th century, when it belonged to a Danish merchant, and in the 1730s a formal park was laid out here for the Counts Golovkin. Later Empress Elizaveta Petrovna granted the land to Alexei Grigoryevich Razumovsky, and in 1799–1802 a new estate complex with a park on both banks of the Yauza was built for his nephew, Count Alexei Kirillovich Razumovsky; researchers associate the project’s authorship with the Scottish-born architect Adam Menelaws, although this is not documented.

The main house follows a layout typical of its era: the central wooden section is joined to two-storey brick wings decorated with gate-arches leading into the inner courtyards. The entrance is marked by a semicircular niche with slender columns and a plain pediment, and the façade decoration is executed in wood and plaster — the staircases were once adorned with statues of lions in niches. The spacious courtyard in front of the house was intended for turning carriages, and contemporaries called the park, which stretched all the way to the Yauza, a place where nature made one forget the bustle of the city.

In the autumn of 1812 the estate escaped the fire of Moscow — its walls housed the residence of Napoleon’s Marshal Murat, carefully guarded by the French. After Count Razumovsky retired, the house became a venue for summer balls and demonstration hay-mowing events for the nobility. After the owner’s death in 1822 the estate fell into disrepair, and in 1833 it passed to the Board of Trustees, which set up an orphanage here, followed by several educational and charitable institutions. In 1918, by order of Lenin, an institute of physical culture was opened in the building; it occupied the estate until the late 1960s and left a notable mark on its history, including the creation of a ski museum.

After the institute moved out, the building was occupied by sports agencies, and in 1999, shortly after the estate was transferred to the Russian Academy of Arts, a major fire damaged part of the main building. A large-scale restoration was completed in 2015: the Museum of Physical Culture and Sport opened on an area of five thousand square meters, while the remaining premises were given over to offices of the Russian Ministry of Sport.

Today the Razumovsky Estate combines the functions of a museum, a departmental building and a city park, while preserving its architectural appearance from the turn of the 18th–19th centuries. Its path from an aristocratic residence, through a Soviet institute of physical culture, to a present-day museum space has made the estate a rare monument in whose history several different eras of Moscow life are reflected.