History

The land had passed through noble hands for two centuries, including the Streshnev and Galitzine families, before Catherine bought it from Prince Cantemir in 1775. She wanted a summer residence close to Moscow and gave the commission to her court architect, Bazhenov. Construction began in May 1776 and dragged on for a decade, plagued by shortages of money and materials despite Bazhenov’s plan to finish within three years. When Catherine finally inspected the buildings in June 1785, her verdict was blunt: narrow stairs, heavy ceilings, cramped rooms, halls dark as cellars. Historians now read deeper motives into her anger. Relations with her son Paul had soured, and Bazhenov’s twin-palace layout no longer suited a court where she wanted no rival household. His Masonic ties, formalised in 1784, likely counted against him too. Bazhenov was dismissed on the spot. His former student Kazakov took over, building a single Grand Palace that stood roughly finished, under a temporary roof, when Catherine died in 1796. Paul I inspected it in 1797, disliked it, and halted all further work by decree. No emperor after Catherine lived there. The abandoned buildings crumbled into romantic ruin through the early 1800s, though under Alexander I the park opened for public walks, and architect Ivan Egotov added stone pavilions in a landscaped style. In 1860 the estate left royal ownership. A railway station opened nearby in 1865, and Tsaritsyno became a dacha colony visited by Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tchaikovsky and other figures of the era.