On our huge planet, every person has a special corner to which they want to return again and again. For me, this is the place, my small homeland, where I spent my childhood. And every time, making my little journey, I pass by the most beautiful architectural complex of the Ryazan region - the estate of Baron von Derviz.
The majestic structure amazes with its beauty: turrets, window openings, arches, stairs going down to the ponds - everything makes the estate look like a fairy tale come to life.
The palace was built in 1889. The design of the von Derviz estate in Kiritsy was developed by Fyodor Shekhtel, the brightest architect, founder of the “architectural modern” style, a Ryazan resident with German roots. Fyodor Shekhtel left a memory of himself throughout Russia, and the Von Derviz estate became one of the first objects where the famous architect was able to turn around and hone his ideas about beauty in practice. On Ryazan soil, in Kiritsy, he created an ensemble of amazing beauty, beyond all styles and at the same time stylish.
The asymmetrical two-story building was decorated with a portico, crowned with turrets and spiers. One wing of the building was connected to the main building by a glass gallery, and was also decorated with a balcony supported by the wings of a giant eagle. The other wing is equipped with ramps decorated with small sculptures. Two graceful staircases descended from the mansion into the ravine, connecting in a wide terrace. Another staircase led down to a complex system of ponds and an orchard, and the path was decorated with grottoes made of wild stones and sculpted statues of centaurs. Thus, Schlechtel managed to gracefully fit the manor’s estate into the complex landscape. Nearby lies the famous Bridge of Love, illuminated by lanterns, and along the winding alleys you can walk to the Red Gate - two decorative turrets connected by an arched bridge.


Not everything has survived to this day, but what remains of its former luxury makes an indelible impression. The main part of the buildings, decorative elements of the facade and even the famous eagle survived.

The stone bridge across the ravine leading from the palace, along the main alley of the park, to the “Red Gate”, which is at the exit of the park to the Kiritsa River, has practically survived. Four white stone obelisks remained on the bridge, but were destroyedsculptures that decorated them.

The estate is surrounded by an interesting structure: a fence with turrets reminiscent of chess rooks or fabulous Gothic towers... But it’s better to see once than to hear a hundred times. Dear friends, visit Kiritsy and see this splendor with your own eyes. You will not regret!

In addition to the official history, the Von Derviz estate has several legends. The most romantic one is, of course, connected to the Bridge of Love. According to one version, the bridge was built by order of Sergei Pavlovich for secluded romantic walks with a local girl. She threw herself off him, suffering from unrequited love. Then the girl allegedly appeared in the form of a ghost at the same place of the fatal meetings. However, this story is most likely made up. Perhaps it is because of this that the Bridge of Love is sometimes called the Devil's Bridge.
Another legend is more modern in nature and is associated with cinema. According to her, it was in Kiritsy that the famous “Cinderella” was filmed. According to local historian Igor Kanaev, in the film “Cinderella” the king commands from the balcony of Shekhtel’s house in Kiritsy. And if this is so, then directors Nadezhda Kosheverova and Mikhail Shapiro very successfully chose the place for location filming - after all, the estate in Kiritsy is already a ready-made set for a fairy tale. And I was impressed by what I saw and made this video:

Involuntarily becoming interested in the fate of this estate, I managed to find out some interesting facts from the life of its owners.

The Von Dervises appeared in Russia a very long time ago. Their ancestors were nobles, Ryazan landowners from a Russified German family that moved to Russia from Hamburg back in the 18th century. And their surname was the simplest - Wiese, without this noble prefix “von”. And this “background” with the indispensable article “der” appeared later, during the time of the Russian Emperor Peter III, who awarded the title of nobility to the head of thisof the family to Johann Adolf Wiese for his “diligent efforts” at the Justitz College.

This is how Russian nobles with the German surname von Derviz (Von-Derviz) appeared among us.

History has preserved the name of Pavel Grigorievich Von Derviz, a Ryazan entrepreneur who became famous throughout Russia for his successes in the construction of railways. The railway path brought Von Derviz a colossal fortune, and Pavel Grigorievich himself became one of the richest people in Russia. They began to call him the “Russian Monte Cristo.” He truly became one of the richest people in Russia. In addition to several estates in the Ryazan region, the family owned real estate in Moscow and St. Petersburg, France and Switzerland.

Success, happiness? Alas... The figure of Pavel Von-Derviz is notable for his entrepreneurial talent, luck, and... his tragedy. Fate, which seemed so favorable to him, suddenly hit him in the very heart, hit him where it hurt most. The children of Pavel Grigorievich Von-Derviz, one after another, were struck by a then little-studied, practically incurable and therefore terrible disease - bone tuberculosis. He tried to save them. He left everything and took them to France. He did everything possible and impossible to cure his children...

But it was not possible to save two children: the death of his son Vladimir crippled his father, and the death of his youngest daughter Varenka brought him to the grave - Pavel Grigorievich died of a heart attack when he saw the coffin with her body.

A significant part of Von Derviz's colossal fortune went to his eldest son, Sergei Pavlovich. Since childhood, Serezhenka was known as a sensitive and artistic person; he graduated from the Moscow Conservatory and enjoyed communicating with muses rather than with business partners. He spent most of the inheritance on the construction of a manor house in Kiritsy.

However, the Von Dervises did not have long to enjoy the masterpiece of architecture. Sergei Pavlovich quickly went bankrupt, abandoned the family business, and after his mother’s death he sold off the remains of his Ryazan property and left with his wife and daughter for Paris. In 1908, the estate passed to Prince Gorchakov, but he himself did not live in it, and the farm gradually fell into disrepair. Perhaps it was the constant absence of the owner that saved the estate from the massacre of the peasants.
After the revolution, the building first belonged to the agricultural school, then it was transferred to the local technical school, and then it became a recreation center. In 1938, a sanatorium for children... suffering from osteoarticular tuberculosis was opened in the mansion. An amazing coincidence of circumstances returned historical justice. Pavel Grigorievich Von Derviz, with whose money the fabulous estate was built, would probably be pleased.

His younger brother, the romantic Pavel Pavlovich, was a famous old-time horse breeder. Pavel Von-Derviz bred heavy draft horses, riding and trotting horses, including horses of the Arabian, English and Oryol breeds, which were purchased by the treasury for the regiments of the Russian Guards cavalry. He taught mathematics at the gymnasium he founded. The last graduation from the Ryazan Von-Derviz gymnasium was in 1919, when the Civil War was already in full swing in Russia, and Pavel Pavlovich himself by that time had a different surname - Lugovoi.

He, like his father, passionately loved art - opera and painting. In his amateur theater he not only staged operas (Eugene Onegin and others), but also sang the main roles in them.

In 1919, with the advent of the new government, “excesses” of all kinds began, but Pavel Pavlovich was warned of the danger by faithful old-timers, and he left his estate on foot. He ended up in Petrograd, but was arrested there and sent to Moscow, to Butyrka. He would have died, like many of his “class brothers,” but his students stood up for him before the authorities. The matter ended with Lenin himself writing him a kind of safe-conduct. And in 1920, he began giving lectures on mathematics at the Ryazan cavalry command courses, which then opened on the basis of his own stud farm. And one of the cadets, who listened to Pavel Pavlovich’s lectures was the future Soviet marshal and hero of the Great Patriotic War Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov...

However, nothing helped the patriot baron, who voluntarily gave up Soviet power all its property. Persecuted by the new authorities, the rural teacher Derviz-Lugovoy lived out his days in the Tver province.

Everything remained in the past - the state, estates, horse breeding, "Eugene Onegin" on the stage of the summer theater, and even the ringing name of von Derviz seemed to have sunk into oblivion. However, this did not happen. By some miracle, it was preserved in memory, books, archives, in the very building of the restored estate and returned to the current 21st century.

And now more about this beautiful mansion...

Yes, this is really von Derviz’s mansion on Sadovo-Chernogryazskaya...

Last summer I already wrote a little about it (http://community.livejournal.com/moya_moskva/528696.html) and even posted photographs that I took in a hurry... Now I managed to visit it longer and try to capture the most beautiful parts of the interior... Unfortunately, I don’t yet have a wide-angle lens that would allow me to show general views of the rooms and halls, so due to limited space I had to be content with what I got... Let’s add to this the difficult shooting conditions and twilight. ..

I'll start with history...

I won’t go into the history of the “von derWies” family; I’ll start right away with the most famous - Pavel Grigorievich von DerWies (1826-1881). He was one of the first major figures in the field of railway construction.

Acting State Councilor. In 1847-57 he served in the Senate and the War Ministry in the Provisions Department. After retiring, he moved to Moscow, where he became secretary and member of the board of the Moscow-Saratov Railway Society. In 1863 he headed the board of the Moscow-Ryazan Railway Company and received a state concession for its construction on favorable terms. He lived in Moscow in the management house of the Ryazan-Kozlovskaya Railway on Kalanchevskaya Street. In 1868, having earned a multi-million dollar fortune, he retired from business, went abroad, lived in Nice and Lugano. In 1874-76 he founded and built in Moscow at his own expense the St. Vladimir Children's Hospital (in 1922 it was renamed Children's Clinical Hospital No. 2 named after I.V. Rusakov, since 1991 it has had the same name; Rubtsovsko-Dvortsovaya Street, 1/3).

sign in front of Iosifyan's offices. There's no one in it now

His son Sergei Pavlovich von Derviz (years of birth and death are unknown), actual state councilor, landowner, owner of the Inzer mine in the Urals. Leader of the nobility of the Spassky district of the Ryazan province. Since 1903, honorary trustee of the women's gymnasium named after V.P. von Derviz (together with his brother Pavel Pavlovich). Honorary member of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society. Purchased an organ for the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. From 1886 he lived in a mansion on Sadovaya-Chernogryazskaya Street (6).

Here is what is written about this house in the Encyclopedia of Moscow: Derviz House, Sadovaya-Chernogryazskaya, 6. Built for S.P. von Derviz in 1886 on the territory of the 18th century estate. The palace-type mansion stands at a significant distance from the street, in the front yard. Relatively small, the house is very impressive, which is achieved by using in its architecture compositional techniques and decorative details in the spirit of Italian Renaissance architecture, characteristic of one of the eclecticism trends, rare in Moscow. The central part of the building is highlighted by a projection with a large porch, on the sides of which there are ramps for entry. Lamps in the shape of female figures are placed on them. The facades are faced with granite and covered with large rustication with lion masks on the second floor. Above the heavy cornice are stands with flowerpots. The interior decoration (one of the earliest works by F.O. Shekhtel) is extremely representative - gilded stucco on the walls and ceilings is combined with picturesque panels. In 1888-89, the building was enlarged with an extension (Shekhtel); in 1911-12, a high stone fence was installed along the street line (architect N.N. Chernetsov).

In 1904 S.P. von Derviz sells this mansion to the hereditary nobleman L.K. Zubalova, the son of a millionaire oil industrialist, owner of oil fields in Baku. And in 1911, on his instructions, a massive high fence was erected. According to one version, in order to hide from the curious glances of passers-by and street noise, according to another, frightened by the events of 1905, Zubalov left Moscow and, returning in 1909, asked the city government for permission to build a wall that would fence off his property from the street.

A very interesting "keyless" safe. Somehow it opens in a clever way

However, already in 1918, Zubalov’s wife, Olga Ivanovna, transferred this mansion to the Rumyantsev Museum and the house officially became a branch of the Rumyantsev Museum.

It should be noted that Iosifyan chose, perhaps, the best room for his office. Such an abundance of naked women can only be found in his office

In 1920, the building housed a special technical bureau of the Supreme Council of National Economy (VSNKh), and later NII-20. At the same time, the artistic beauty was not damaged. NII-20 was evacuated from Moscow in September 1941. And the building was transferred to VNIIEM, which was headed by A.G. Iosifyan from 1941 to 1993. The management of VNIIEM is still located in the house, the beauty of which is protected by the state.

Stained glass... As far as I know, some of them are currently being restored

Closet door

Women's busts made of wood along the edges of the sofa

Actually, the bust of Iosifyan himself...

A Pirsi carpet over 200 years old. Some Arab delegation, having seen the carpet, offered a lot of money for it...

Chandelier in the hall... Different everywhere...

And on the wall...

The most beautiful stained glass window with the family coat of arms of the von Derviz family on the flight of the main staircase

And this is a safe room. It is located in the right extension of the house. It is called a safe because of the powerful and heavy entrance doors and the same windows. Apparently, no one could get in.
And in the photo the only one left current black marble fireplace

Figures on the edges of the fireplace...

The von Derviz coat of arms can be found almost everywhere... In this case, on the mantelpiece

The main staircase is made of white marble. Leads to the second floor

Fireplace on the second floor. Plug with coat of arms

Ceiling

And this is the ceiling

Beautiful tapestries on the walls

Coat of arms on the staircase railing

Chandelier in the meeting room. Made from Bohemian crystal. During reconstructions, painters tried to steal the crystal pieces. Some are irretrievably lost

This is generally one of the most beautiful halls. Decorated walls and ceilings

Fireplace edge

Fireplace plug. There are no flat surfaces here

The most beautiful fireplace. Made from red marble

This was probably the ideal of a woman at that time.

And this is a tea room with an atrium. True, there is snow now and all the beauty is not visible

This is the sofa in front of the tea table

Marble table

Sofa with some Japanese motifs

Lanterns at the entrance. They can still be seen in the Soviet film "The Feast of St. Jorgen" of 1930

Griffons on the walls

Vases on the roof. The external decoration is much poorer

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It is almost impossible to believe that in the provincial expanses of the Ryazan region you can find a luxurious fairy-tale palace that would look much more harmonious somewhere among the Bavarian or Czech forests. And even after seeing this castle, for a few more minutes tourists cannot get used to the structure, which is completely uncharacteristic for central Russia. However, for more than 120 years, the von Derviz estate has been a decoration of the village of Kiritsy.

The history of the von Derviz estate in Kiritsy matches its appearance - a fairy tale, but this tale has a sad ending.

History of the von Derviz estate

The history of this estate matches its appearance - a fairy tale, but this fairy tale has a sad ending. The von Derviz family was not aristocratic, and received its noble title only under Peter III. Having earned an impressive fortune through honest work, the nobles were actively involved in charity work, participating in the construction of hospitals, schools, and gymnasiums. After the death of the head of the family, the eldest son of the von Dervizs takes over the master's baton, he buys Kiritsy, demolishes the buildings of the bankrupt mirror factory, and in their place lays out a garden, to which a brick-paved road leads.

The construction of the palace and all adjacent buildings is carried out by the famous architect Fyodor Shekhtel.

It is impossible to curb the creator’s imagination, and in 1889 a palace of incredible beauty grew up in the village, framed by cascades of stairs, romantic turrets, arches, and forged openwork balconies.

The fabulous estate ruined its owners in the 1910s. it was sold, and after the revolution it was completely nationalized. The estate managed to be an agricultural school and a holiday home, until a children's medical sanatorium opened in it in 1938. We can say that the estate was saved and preserved, but too much was lost irretrievably over the many years of devastation. During the Soviet years, the unchanged attributes of that time appeared on the backyard territory: sculptures of pioneers, bears, deer. The modern history of the estate is associated with large-scale repairs and reconstructions.

Tourist Information

Despite the fact that the estate is open to the public, visits by organized tourist groups are recommended to be coordinated with the administration in advance. If the excursion is not approved (this is rare, but it still happens), you can use the services of travel companies, in which case they will select transport for you and recommend a tour guide.

You also need to take into account that while walking around the estate, you can meet sick children in wheelchairs undergoing rehabilitation here. You shouldn’t be afraid of this and don’t pay too much attention.

Address: Ryazan region, Spassky district, village. Kiritsy.

Free admission.

You can get to the village by your own car along the M-5 “Ural” highway; you should follow the sign “Kiritsy Sanatorium”. The village is located 200 km from Moscow and 60 km from Ryazan.

Coordinates: N 54° 17.548" E 40° 21.350".

There is a car park next to the estate.

In addition, several bus routes pass through Kiritsy; at the suburban ticket office of the Ryazan bus station you need to buy a ticket for any of the buses that go to Sapozhok, Sarai, Shilovo or the village of Lesnoy. Please note that it is much more difficult to go back, since there is no bus station in Kiritsy, so you will have to rely on luck and slow down passing buses (this is usually possible, however, it is still better not to delay the walk until late in the evening). Those who decide to take the train will face a rather tiring journey on foot, so this is not the best choice.

About the owners of the house from an article in St. Petersburg Gazette,

The history of the house dates back to the first years of the existence of St. Petersburg. In 1717, the plot was listed as belonging to Ivan Makarovich Polyansky, adjutant of His Serene Highness Prince A.D. Menshikov, the owner of the neighboring mud hut building. If in 1732 the Chief Krieg Commissioner had “the upper apartment of the chambers unfinished,” then four years later the stone chambers in the basements were already built in the Baroque style, have two floors, 13 axes along the facade and porches along the edges. At the same time, “...through the broker Paul Thomsen...various movable things and accessories were sold at public auction.” The Polyanskys owned the mansion for almost a century.

Ivan Makarovich was born into the family of a clerk, a favorite of Peter I, and did not have a great career. Much more successful was his son, Andrei Ivanovich (1698-1764), who inherited a house on the embankment and ended his life with the rank of full admiral. He was sent by the tsar to study maritime affairs in Europe, from where he returned in 1725. Having been commander of the Baltic Fleet since 1751, Polyansky successfully participated in the Seven Years' War, blockaded Prussian ports and took the Kolberg fortress.

His half-brother Alexander Ivanovich (1721-1818) preferred land service to naval service. Having entered the army as a soldier, he retired as a colonel in 1765. He was appointed to the Commission for the drafting of the new Code, became a senator and privy councilor. In the year of his resignation, Polyansky married Countess Elizaveta Romanovna Vorontsova (1739-1792), the favorite of the murdered Peter III, who “did not hide his exorbitant love for her to anyone,” although the girl was ugly, fat and awkward, and also pockmarked. It was rumored that the emperor wanted to marry this maid of honor, divorcing Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseevna and exiling her to a monastery. After the overthrow, he begged: “Leave me my only consolation, Elizaveta Romanovna.”

According to S.P. Zhikharev, Alexander Ivanovich in his old age was known as an eccentric: “he doesn’t go anywhere except for performances, which he attends every day, alternately, in Russian, then in French, and sometimes in German... and everywhere he receives shares the impressions with the entire audience.”

Thanks to his wife, whose sister was the famous Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova, close to Catherine II, Polyansky entered court circles. His only son Alexander Alexandrovich (1774-1818), leaving military service, received the rank of chamberlain, and in 1817 was appointed senator. He was married to an aristocrat, Countess Elizaveta Ivanovna Ribopierre (1781-1847), but had no children from her.
Martha Wilmot, who came with her sister from England, spoke about the furnishings of the Polyansky house in 1803 in a letter to her homeland: “...an apartment consisting of a very elegant dressing room, furnished with sofas and chairs<...>, there is a piano, a harp, a large mirror<...>, statues on pedestals, vases, there is an icon<...>. The hostess led me through a suite of huge, spacious rooms, no less than ten in number...” There were eleven of these rooms on the mezzanine.

In 1841, a widow and her children sold the mansion, converted in the classicist style, for 67 thousand rubles. silver to the actual state councilor Nikita Vsevolodovich Vsevolozhsky (1799-1862), this “darling of fate.” Nikita and his brother Alexander, a participant in the war with Napoleon, were among the founders of the literary society “Green Lamp” and inherited great wealth from their father, the “Russian Croesus,” including the suburban estate Ryabovo (now Vsevolozhsk). Nikita served as an official, translated French vaudevilles, and was friends with A.S. Pushkin, whom he met through his service at the nearby (32 Angliyskaya Embankment) Collegium of Foreign Affairs. The poet wanted to depict the Vsevolozhsky House in the unwritten novel “Russian Pelam”. Having bought the house, Vsevolozhsky immediately rebuilt it.

A wit and an avid theatergoer, Nikita led a rather wild lifestyle, squandered his fortune and became mired in debt, which is why he eventually ended up under guardianship. His house on the embankment in 1853 for only 40 thousand rubles. was auctioned off to the wife of Count Pavel Nikolaevich Ignatiev (1797-1879), who was appointed Governor-General of St. Petersburg in the same year. Eight years later, the couple gave the house to their daughter Olga (1837-1908), who was married to the retinue general Alexander Elpidiforovich Zurov, who served as the mayor of the capital in 1878-1880. Zurova’s brother Nikolai, a talented diplomat, drew up the San Stefano Peace Treaty, nephew Alexei is the author of the famous memoir “Fifty Years in Service.”

In June 1889, the house was acquired by Vera Nikolaevna von Derviz, the widow of the “Russian Montecristo” Pavel Grigorievich von Derviz (1826-1881) from the Russified Germans. He received higher education at the School of Law and in 1847-1857. served in the Department of Heraldry of the Senate and the Ministry of Justice, but left the government service and very successfully began building railroads. According to the obituary, Baron P. G. Derviz was “the first to show the way to the easy construction of rail tracks in Russia and the possibility of making multimillion-dollar fortunes in this way.”

A year after the purchase, Vera Nikolaevna gave the mansion to her youngest son, Pavel Pavlovich (1870-1943), a young lieutenant of the Life Guards of the Grodno Hussar Regiment, who, getting ready to get married, immediately set about rebuilding it. Perestroika in the style of the Florentine Renaissance was carried out by academician A.F. Krasovsky, who worked a lot for the baron’s family.

The loving, handsome hussar married for the first time in 1891, and for the last time in the 1920s, and each time these were unequal marriages. From five marriages, Pavel Pavlovich had three sons and seven daughters. After the revolution, he was arrested, spent several months in the Butyrka prison in Moscow, and then went to the Ryazan estate Starozhilovo, where he began teaching at school. However, the estate had to be left, and from 1928 Derviz lived and worked as a teacher in the village of Maksatikha near Tver, where he was buried. He bore the surname Lugovoi, which he took during the First World War out of patriotic feelings.

In June 1903, the capital's mansion, which was difficult to maintain, was sold for 400 thousand rubles. to the young Grand Duke Andrei Vladimirovich (1879-1956), cousin of Nicholas II. He had just entered the Military Law Academy near the Potseluev Bridge, that is, not far from the house that he rented to the American embassy. Andrei had an affair with the famous ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya, which ended in legal marriage in emigration. During the First World War, the retinue major general commanded the Guards Horse Artillery and, being very interested in politics, participated in the high society front. At the end of 1916, a family council was held in the palace on the embankment, where the grand dukes discussed their constitutional proposals to the tsar.

Since subsequent events did not live up to the hopes of the frontiers, Andrei Vladimirovich had to leave his palace forever, in which various Soviet institutions operated until 1959, when it finally received a more worthy use.

On the last day of our trip to Ryazan, the weather turned bad again, and instead of the planned farewell walk around the city, we decided to see the von Derviz estates in Kiritsy and Starozhilovo, 40 km from Ryazan.

These estates are quite unusual, and their history is closely intertwined with the fates of their founders. Therefore, I will begin my story with the von Derviz themselves.

Ryazan entrepreneur Pavel Grigorievich von Derviz (1826-1881) made a huge fortune in the construction of railways. In the 19th century, this business turned out to be incredibly profitable, especially if you doubled the cost of work, carried out fraud with capital and securities, and had influential patrons. Having become one of the richest people in Russia, he owned real estate in Moscow and St. Petersburg, France and Switzerland.

But now we are not interested in Pavel Grigorievich himself, but in his children: Sergei, Pavel, Varvara, Andrei and Vladimir.

The eldest son of Pavel Grigorievich, Sergei Pavlovich von Derviz, was born in 1865. After his father's death, he received a rich inheritance, but his father's entrepreneurial spirit was not passed on to him. Occupying mainly representative positions, Sergei led an active social life, spending his father’s untold wealth.

Having acquired the Kiritsa estate, Sergei demolished the mirror factory, which was eking out a miserable existence, and built a luxurious estate in its place. For this purpose, a young architect Fyodor Osipovich Shekhtel was hired. And by the end of the 19th century, a fairy-tale castle grew on the banks of the Kiritsa River.

The estate was surrounded by a fence. On the vast territory there was a church and a horse yard, hanging bridges and grottoes.

Two majestic staircases descended from the palace to the lawn in a semicircle, next to which gazebos topped with tritons were located symmetrically.

There was a bizarre grotto built under the stairs, and a fountain flowed on the terrace in front of it. Then you could go down to the ponds and garden.

The main building of the estate was decorated with turrets with spiers and weather vanes. Glazed passages were built between the wings. The graceful balcony of one of the wings was supported by the mighty wings of an eagle.

The Bridge of Love was built across the ravine next to the mansion. According to legend, a girl, unrequitedly in love with Sergei, threw herself down from this bridge.

Sergei Pavlovich loved his estate very much and gladly came here every year for the whole summer. But, having gone bankrupt, after the death of his mother in 1908, he sold all his real estate and left Russia forever. He died in Cannes in 1943.

The estate stood abandoned until the Soviet authorities placed a school here, and then a rest home.

Sergei's younger brothers and sister - Vladimir, Andrey and Varvara - did not live very long, they were struck by a serious illness - bone tuberculosis. Vladimir and Andrey died as infants, Varvara died at 16 years old. The father could not survive the loss of his children; he died immediately after the death of his beloved daughter.

And here is the irony of fate: in the Kiritsy estate, from 1938 to this day, there is a children's sanatorium where children with bone tuberculosis are treated.

Now let's move on to another brother of Sergei - Pavel Pavlovich von Derviz.

At the time of his father’s death, Pavel was 11 years old, and he inherited an estate in the village of Starozhilovo. Like his older brother, Pavel was a very wealthy man. He became interested in breeding elite horses and founded a stud farm in Starozhilovo, and, on the advice of his brother, he hired the same F.O. as an architect. Shekhtel.

Beginning in 1893, over six years, 12 buildings were built here, including an estate, a stud farm itself, a blacksmith shop, houses for workers and a church.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, several thousand horses were kept in the stables. Elite horses were bought abroad, trotters won races. At the Starozhilovsky plant, horses of the most prestigious breeds were bred for the Guards cavalry regiments.

In addition to horse breeding, Pavel had another hobby - mathematics. He passed the university exams for the entire mathematics course as an external student and began teaching at the gymnasium he founded.

During the First World War, Pavel patriotically changed his German surname, and, translating the word “Wiese” into Russian, became Pavel Pavlovich Lugovoi.

After the revolution, Pavel was arrested and released only thanks to the petition of former students of the von Derviz gymnasium. Lugovoy got a job as a teacher at the Ryazan cavalry command courses, which opened on the basis of the Starozhilovsky stud farm. One of his students was the future Marshal of Victory G.K. Zhukov.

But soon the courses were transferred to another place, Pavel Pavlovich and his family wandered from place to place and eventually settled in the Tver region. He worked as a mathematics teacher in a rural school; Pavel died in 1943.

And the stud farm founded by Pavel Pavlovich von Derviz still exists.

We had another interesting meeting in Starozhilovo. A small flock of turkeys with turkeys was grazing right on the asphalt. We are no longer surprised by chickens and geese, but we saw turkeys for the first time.

When we wanted to take a closer picture of the birds, a turkey moved out from the flock, puffed up, became twice as wide across itself and, hissing, headed towards us. He was so belligerent that we decided to go home :)

This concludes the story about the autumn trip. It was interesting for us, a little unusual - we didn’t go to many places, but we did a lot of fishing (though without much of a catch), rested and even got a little tan. The memories will last a long time :)

Thank you for your attention! And see you on new journeys! :)