Kolomenskoye

Kolomenskoye is a former tsarist country estate southeast of central Moscow, perched high above the Moskva River and absorbed into the city in 1960. Its landmark is the Church of the Ascension, completed in 1532 as Russia's first stone tent-roof church and inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1994. Ivan the Terrible is said to have spent part of his childhood here, and in the 17th century Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich built a famous wooden palace, now reconstructed in the southern part of the park. Visitors roam some 390 hectares of grounds, visit an open-air museum with timber buildings translocated from across Russia and look down on the river bend from the bluff. In winter half the city sleds the slopes.