Pashkov House

The Pashkov House is one of Moscow's purest Classicist mansions, built in 1784-1786 for guards captain Pyotr Pashkov on Vagankov Hill directly opposite the Borovitskaya Tower of the Kremlin. Its attribution to Vasily Bazhenov is generally accepted though undocumented: Bazhenov had earlier designed Catherine II's never-realised Kremlin reconstruction, and ironically took the highest point in the city here to look down on the Kremlin. The white building with central rotunda, Corinthian columns and belvedere burned in Napoleon's fire of 1812 and was restored in 1818. Since 1862 the house has served Russia's library world; today it holds the manuscript and special collections of the Russian State Library, including the parchment collection with texts from Ivan the Terrible. The small forecourt offers one of the city's best Kremlin views.