Arhangelskoe, Moscow. Travel to Russia

For three centuries, its owners were the princes Odoyevsky, Golitsyn, Yusupov. At the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries, an architectural and park ensemble in the style of classicism was created on the estate. To this day, Arkhangelskoye Palace has remained the only integral architectural and park ensemble in the Moscow Region, which has preserved all the basic elements of planning and development. With all the uniqueness of artistic techniques, it concentrates in itself the best that was created in Russian estate art of the 18th-19th centuries.

In the middle of the XVII century the village was in the possession of the Odoyevsky princes, quite famous figures of their time. In the 1660s by their order, on the site of the wooden church, probably under the direction of the serf architect Pavel Potekhin, a stone one was erected. At the same time the village was officially called Arkhangelskoye.

Under Prince Nikolai Alekseevich Golitsyn (1751-1809), construction of a magnificent architectural ensemble began in the estate. In August 1783, the prince brought to the estate of the Swedish engineer Johann Eric Norberg, who in the following summer built two dams on the Goryatinka river that flows into the Moscow River. The resulting ponds served as a reservoir for the operation of two hydraulic machines that, with the help of a system of wooden pipes, supplied the park, the greenhouse, the vegetable garden, the stable, the household and the residential buildings with water. This made it possible to build another wonder in the estate for the estates of that time near Moscow - fountains.

Construction work in the palace was carried out in varying degrees, more than forty years. The abundance of glass doors and windows indicates that this is a summer palace. A characteristic feature is the presence of numerous columns. They are available on all facades, giving a rather monumental building lightness and elegance. In the center of the main and side facades, four Roman-Ionic columns form porticos. Colonnades of fourteen pairs of Tuscan columns organize the transitions from the northern facade of the house to the outbuildings. The same paired columns support the balconies of the upper floor of the side facades. Six false columns on the southern facade adorn the doors of the protruding semi-conde. And, finally, eight pairs of Roman-Corinthian columns frame the belvedere that appeared later.

Another feature of the palace is the different heights of its floors. On the first, higher, there were ceremonial halls, and on the second - living rooms and a library. Simultaneously with the construction of the palace, work was carried out on the reorganization of the park. The drawings that have been preserved in the Golitsyn archive have brought to us the name of the author of the project of two terraces in front of the southern facade of the palace, Giacomo Trombar. On the edge of a cliff above the Moscow River, two greenhouses were put symmetrically. Next to the eastern greenhouse pavilion, the "Roman Gate" was erected - a tribute to the fascination with antique ruins, which was fashionable at the time. In the western part of the regular park, a complex was established, called the "Caprice", which itself formed a miniature manor on the estate. From the north it was adjoined by a stretched wooden library building with a central brick pavilion.

In 1798, Prince N.A. Golitsyn was dismissed. By 1800, his business fell into disrepair, monetary difficulties began, and construction in Arkhangelskoye also stopped. Later the estate was mortgaged. To improve his affairs, the prince partially sold his fiefdoms in various provinces. In 1809, Nikolai Alekseevich died. His widow, Maria Adamovna, decided to sell the estate.

The first contender for the purchase of Archangel became Prince Ivan Naryshkin. The princes of Vyazemsky, who also wanted to buy a manor, considered the estate to be "too magnificent" and costly. But it was precisely this that attracted one of the richest and most distinguished grandees of Catherine's time, an art connoisseur, collector and diplomat, Prince Nikolai Borisovich Yusupov (1750/51 - 1831). The considerable price of the estate turned out to be acceptable for him - 245 thousand rubles, and the large expenses required for its completion and maintenance.

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