Masterpieces of Architecture around Moscow

Text by Mikhail Ilyin
Photographs by Alexei Alexandrov

Text is Russian and English.
19 pages text, 91 pages photographs

Translation by Natasha Johnstone

Aurora Publishers Leningrad, hardcover, with map of Moscow.


The inimitable architectural masterpieces around Moscow have a beauty of their own. Be it monastery-fortress or modest village church, palatial complex or small estate, each is a delight with its varied architecture and deep appeal to our sense of beauty. Our inner eye preserves what we see, leaving in our memory a feeling of aesthetic pleasure. I want to dwell on this fact in my endeavour to understand the effect of a beautiful piece of architecture upon the mind. The countryside around Moscow is not noted for its bright colours and is not what can be called strikingly decorative-gently sloping hills, slow flowing rivers between banks of gently swaying reeds, dark ravines with fir trees, wild bird cherry and alders growing on the steep sides, and birch groves, that is the truly Russian background setting off both ancient architectural monuments and those of the period of Peter the Great and after.
We understand the appeal of the Moscow countryside when we think of the artistic imagination of our predecessors who built their handsome, exquisite works of architecture in this setting. A poetic feeling for the Russian countryside always played an important role in the choice of a site for an entire city, monastery, village church or estate. This is well illustrated in the lovely story by a seventeenth-century writer Karion Istomin about the foundation of Vysotsky Monastery near Serpukhov (Moscow Region). It tells of how Father Superior Sergius of Radonezh, a prominent figure of the fourteenth century, chose a site "of great beauty, near a meeting of waters, where rivers flow to gladden the heart of the dwellers in God's place.' And in fact there are always plenty of lakes, rivers and streams near the architectural monuments built around Moscow. In their waters are reflected colourful, at times fairy-tale like buildings; sometimes like precious necklaces they surround turreted monastery walls or heighten the elegance of old, shady parks. It can be said that one cannot find a single village or manor house that is not set against the background of a river or pond, even though their role might be small or unimportant.
Architectural masterpieces began to be built around Moscow in that ……………….