The Golitsyn Family Manor

During the three centuries of its history, the Golitsyn Family Manor in Volkhonka repeatedly changed appearance. The author of the original project was the famous Petersburg architect Savva Chevakinsky. In 1774, the manor was rebuilt and became the central part of the Prechistensky Palace, built according to the design of Matvey Kazakov for Catherine II. The walls of this house have seen many famous people. A.S. Pushkin appeared on luxurious balls more than once. Alexander Sergeevich was even going to get married with Natalia Goncharova in the home church of Prince Golitsyn, but the wedding ceremony was arranged in the Church of the Ascension of the Lord at the Nikitsky Gate. Alexander Nikolaevich Ostrovsky settled in the main house in 1877. Here he finished the play “The Last Sacrifice,” wrote “Dowryless,” “Heart is not a Stone,” “Talents and Fans.” In 1885, Ivan Sergeevich Aksakov, one of the leaders of the Slavophile movement, occupied the neighboring apartment. In 1865, a free museum was opened consisting of family collections in the five halls of the main house of the Golitsyn manor. The museum had three sections: Western European painting, sculpture and decorative and applied art, ancient monuments, library. Works by Bruegel, van Dyck, Veronese, Canaletto, Caravaggio, Perugino, Poussin, and Rembrandt were presented in the picturesque meeting of the owners of the house. A year later, due to financial difficulties, the collection of the museum was sold to the Hermitage. After the revolution, in the late 1920s, the main house of the estate became the Communist Academy; it was built on two floors, as a result of which the pediment was lost. The imposing gates, crowned with the Golitsyn princely coat of arms, are the only things that have survived in their original form. After completion of the reconstruction, the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art Gallery opens in the former building of the Golitsyn estate. Works by outstanding masters of the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries will be exhibited in this Art Gallery: Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Cezanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Matisse and Fauves, Picasso and Cubists, originating from the collections of the famous pre-revolutionary Moscow collectors S. I. Shchukin and I. A. Morozov.