Kolomenskoe

Kolomenskoe is an ancient village near Moscow (Russia), which became a part of Moscow in the 1960th. Former grand prince and tzar country estate. Architectural ensemble of 16-17 centures on the hight bank of the Moskva River. Was first mentioned in the Ivan Kalita testament in the 1339.

Kolomenskoe is a beautiful collection of architectural sites, which Moscowers tend to treat as 'the eights wonder of a world'. The semantic center of Kolomenskoe is the Church of the Ascension (see picture), one of the first stone-built churches with the hipped roof (was built in the 1662). The church stands up toward the sky from the lower cross-shaped podklet (the ground floor), then a chetverik (an octagonal body) of the churh, and then an octagonal hipped roof, crowned by a little flat head. The narrow pilasters on the sides of the chetverik, the arrow-shaped window frames, the three tiers of the kokoshniks and the quiet rithm of the stone stair arcades and the gulbische gallaries emphasize the dinamic tendency of this masterpiece of the Russian architecture.

Kolomenskoe complex also includes a five-pillar church of the Church of the Beheading of St. John the Forerunner (the Baptist) of Dyakovo (1547, see picture), admittedly buit by the same masters, who later built the Saint Basil's Cathedral on the Red Square of Moscow.

The other sites of the Kolomenskoe: The Church of St George (with a bell tower), The Church of Our Lady of Kazan, the Spasskie Gates (Saviour) and the Back Gates, the Wooden Gate Tower (see a picture below), the Bratsk Stockade Tower, some other wooden buildings, several ancient land-marks etc.

In the 1667-1671 a Tzar Palace was constructed in Kolomenskoe for the tzar Alexey Mihaylovich. It was a great wooden palace, made by the best masters of the traditional Russian wooden architecture and construction. The wooden palace have become ramshacle, however, and in the 1768 in was deconstructed. Now the Moscow Government are considering plans about it's historical reconstruction.

Near the Kolomenskoe the Dyakovo hill with the ancient Dyakovo gorodische is situated.

In the deep ravine, which separates Kolomenskoe hill from the Dyakovo hill, a brook flows. In this ravine there are several ancient pagan ritual stones of the Veles heathen. The legend tells that it was in this ravine where the St George (the holy patron of Moscow) breaks the dragon. There are also stones in the ravine, which are considered to carry the traces of the St George horse's hoof.