KUSKOVO

Description

Essentials about Kuskovo in brief

Koskovo is one of the most beautiful architectural ensembles of Moscow and is definitely worth a trip, especially for lovers of beautiful gardens and porcelain. Koskovo was once the summer residence of the noble Sheremetyev family. Today the castle is one of the few noble residences still preserved in Moscow and its surroundings. The park of Koskovo Castle with its many monuments is one of the most popular recreational destinations of the Muscovites themselves. Today, the grounds are home to the State Russian Ceramics Museum.

The history of Kuskovo

The village of Kuskovo in the east of Moscow was first mentioned in a document from the late 16th century, which also shows that it was already then the property of the high noble family of Sheremetyevs. At that time it was an estate with farms, a manor house and a wooden church. The chateau with the 230-hectare park was built in the 1770s and served the Sheremetyevs mainly for ceremonial receptions and other leisure activities. For these purposes, numerous pavilions, an orangery, a hunting lodge and an animal enclosure were built in the palace park. Particularly worth seeing today are the Grotto (a small palace in honor of Neptune, the god of the sea), the Dutch House (a replica of a traditional Dutch brick house) and the Orangery (which now houses the Porcelain Museum).

The State Ceramics Museum

After the October Revolution the estate was nationalized and in 1919 received the status of an open-air museum. In 1938, the State Museum of Ceramics was also incorporated into the Kuskovo Museum Complex. The museum represents the most valuable collection of Western European porcelain in an Eastern European country. It houses an extensive collection of Danish, German, English, French and Russian porcelain, mainly from the 18th and 19th centuries.

The city forest near Kuskovo

Those who want to continue walking in the greenery after a visit to Kuskovo can do so in the 310-hectare city forest directly adjacent to the castle park, which was established in 1935. It is a beautiful deciduous forest with a large population of birch, linden and oak trees.