Photo: museums and exhibitions, Bobrinsky Estate, Tula

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Bobrinsky Estate in Bogoroditsk – a gift from the Empress

Museums and Exhibitions

The homestead of Count Bobrinsky, built on the orders of Empress Catherine the Great, is located at 65 kilometers far from Tula in Bogoroditsk town. Its first owner was Count Alexei Bobrinsky. Historians claim that he was the illegitimate son of the Empress and her favorite Grigory Orlov.

They started building the estate in Bogoroditsk on the ruins of a fortress of the XVII century, on a hill above the Uperta River. This is a two-story white building with a semicircular ledge in the center of the façade and with a balcony supported by Tuscan columns. The ensemble of the manor was completed with a single-dome St.Kazan Church, a multi-tiered bell tower and a landscape park, which impressed the locals so much that they started establishing gardens near their houses. But after 1917 the park was badly damaged, and German troops destroyed the palace during the Great Patriotic War. The reconstruction works began in the 1960s and in 1975 a museum was opened in the reconstructed palace. It was possible to reconstruct only the external appearance of the palace, since no drawings and pictures of the interiors have survived. The palace exhibits works of applied art of the XVIII-XIX centuries, sculptures and paintings in water-colors by Andrey Bolotov - writer and scientist, who was the first manager of the estate.

Bobrinsky Estate in Bogoroditsk – a gift from the Empress

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