The Moscow State Integrated Art and Historical, Architectural and Natural Landscape Museum-Reserve comprises two historical and cultural territories: Kolomenskoe and Izmailovo, and can be rightfully considered one of Russia’s largest museum-reserves. Kolomenskoe, the main territory and the more spacious of the two, occupies an area of 255 hectares.
Kolomenskoe was first mentioned in the 1336 Testament of the Moscow Prince Ivan Danilovich Kalita (Ivan I).
Over time, it became a famous royal residence associated with the two Russian dynasties – the Rurikids and the House of Romanov. Victories in wars were celebrated in this place; in 1662, Kolomenskoe became one of the Copper Riot venues. It is here that the future Emperor Peter I spent his childhood and formed his so-called amusement regiments.
The modern museum-reserve is the legal successor of the Kolomenskoe Museum established in 1923 on the initiative of Peter Baranovsky, an outstanding cultural figure of Russia.
Baranovsky developed a plan to create an open-air museum of architectural monuments at Kolomenskoe. Thanks to his numerous expeditions to different regions of Russia, we can see here such wooden buildings as the Mead Brewery, the Moss Tower of the Suma stockaded fort, the House of Peter I from Arkhangelsk (1702), the Bratsk stockaded fort tower and the Nikolo-Korelsky monastery passage tower.
Research and restoration of the extant Kolomenskoe Tsar's Courtyard monuments, namely the Sytny Yard, the Front Gate complex and the Water Tower, were also initiated by Peter Baranovsky, who became the museum’s first director.
In 2010, the famous wooden Palace of Tsar Alexey Romanov was reconstructed according to historical plans and drawings. By now, it has become one of the major tourist attractions of Moscow.
Today, there are 20 wooden and stone architectural monuments of the XVI-XIX centuries surviving at Kolomenskoe, including the Church of the Ascension built in 1532 (a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage site) and Moscow’s only wooden memorial House of Peter I of 1702. You can also see here unique natural landscapes qualified as specially protected territories, such as the oak grove, the apple tree gardens and flood plain meadows, as well as the Golosov Ravine with its legendary natural sites - the ‘Kadochka’ (‘Little Tub’) spring group, the Goose stone and Maiden stone ancient boulders.
Kolomenskoe architectural monuments and modern buildings host various permanent and temporary exhibitions. The museum-reserve collections comprise about 170 thousand museum items: unique examples of ancient Russian painting (icons), old printed and handwritten books, glazed tiles, archaeological artifacts and more.
