Happy learners are good learners! A blog for and by LFM pupils in Moscow.

The Kuskovo park

During the last holidays, I went to my aunt. We walked in a park – the Kuskovo park, which includes a

palace with several dependances.

On this picture you can see on the left, the main building; the church and the pavillions dispersed in

the park. The house with a green dome is the Grotto with a small pond behind. You can see also the

lake in the right down corner.

We visited the palace of Kuskovo (on the left), actually the museum of Ceramics. The entry was

payless and we stayed outside in line for a long time...

It was the palace of the Scheremetev family which was constructed by

Petr Borisovich Sheremetev

(1713 - 1787). Inside the palace on the western end of the building, there are twelve large rooms,

and two smaller ensembles of rooms for residential use. The different rooms are: the vestibule, the

reception room, the tapestry room, the state bedroom, the cabinet-bureau, everyday bedroom, the

dancing hall, the billiards room and the dining room. This was very interesting to see how people

was living three hundred years ago. The furniture is original: the chairs, the tables, the beds... And

there are a lot of things in ceramics, which are very expensive and rare.

We visited also the Orangerie and the Grotto designed by Argounov.

-The Orangerie (1761–1764) was not used as orangerie but as a large banquet hall for guests. Now

it is a museum for the collections of porcelain.

-The Grotto (1755-1761) represents the palace of the King of the Seas. It was next to a large pond

and preserves its original decoration: the windows were covered with iron grills forged by serf

artisans look like strands of seaweed, the interior space, under dome, is meant to be the throne room

of Neptune, crusted with seashells.

The lake was covered with a thin layer of ice and fishermen were trying to catch some fish.