🌳 Ostafyevo Park: Big Pond and the “Temple of Apollo”

Москва, с. Остафьево, Въездная аллея

The estate's landscape park with lime alleys, the Big Pond, a humpback bridge, the “Temple of Apollo” gazebo and monuments to Pushkin, Karamzin, Vyazemsky and Zhukovsky.

The “Temple of Apollo” gazebo on the bank of the Big Pond was built for Pyotr Vyazemsky by Foma Melnikov in the early 19th century.
The humpback bridge was lost by the 1950s and recreated from historical plans in 1999.
The lime alley is the oldest part of the ensemble: grown trees already appear on the estate plan of 1805.
According to legend, Pushkin named the alley the “Russian Parnassus”, but the historian T. N. Smirnova argues the name was invented in Soviet times.
Count Sheremetev put up the Karamzin monument in 1911, and those to Pushkin, Zhukovsky and the Vyazemskys in 1913.
Mars Field is an oval glade created for the 10th anniversary of the war of 1812, in which Pyotr Vyazemsky took part.
On the site of the outbuilding where Karamzin wrote the first eight volumes of the “History of the Russian State” stands a marker: eight bronze books.

Part of these routes

Ostafyevo and Dubrovitsy: Karamzin and the crowned church