Kolomenskoye Park turns 100 years old! (PHOTOS)

In the park, you can not only ride a bicycle and walk along the embankment of the Moskva River, but also see the rarest wooden churches and ‘ostrogi’ of the 17th-18th centuries, brought to the capital from the empty northern villages. It was with this museum of wooden architecture that the history of the park began in 1923.

The Church of St. George the Victorious was brought from Arkhangelsk Region. It is painted with unusual ornamentation on the outside.

The tower of the Sumskoy Ostrog, meanwhile, is from an ancient Pomor settlement in Karelia. 

But, Kolomenskoye is more than just a museum park. People have lived there for centuries. The settlement was first mentioned as far back as in 1336.

The Church of the Ascension of the Lord, which Prince Vasily III commissioned in honor of the birth of his son Ivan (the future Ivan the Terrible) in 1532, has also been preserved there. Incidentally, the first stone tent church in Russia!

In the 17th century, Kolomenskoye already became a summer country residence of Moscow princes.

Three of six gardens of that time have survived. You can walk through them even today. But, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich’s wooden palace is just a modern reconstruction of his former residence.