In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Russian high society was renowned for its luxury and opulence, with glamorous balls and enormous banquets set against the backdrops of palatial stately homes. However, all this came to an end with the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917, which saw the violent abolition of the monarchy and the implementation of a new, socialist government led by the Bolsheviks, a radical Marxist faction that became the Russian Communist Party.
So, what became of these lavish estates when their imperial owners were forced into exile? Click or scroll to discover the secrets of some of Russia’s most magnificent mansions…
Ipatiev House was a merchant’s residence in Yekaterinburg in west-central Russia, originally commissioned in the 1880s by mining official Ivan Redikortsev. The mansion was built on the slope of a prominent hill, with an elegant design that showcased its occupant’s wealth.
The two-storey building remained a private residence until the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In April of 1918, the home's owner Nikolai Nikolayevich Ipatiev, a military engineer, was forced to vacate the premises of what was soon to become known as 'The House of Special Purposes'.
While the home was never an official imperial residence, the imperial Romanov family, consisting of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra, their son, four daughters and several members of their household staff, were moved into Ipatiev House on 30 April 1918. They remained at the house for 78 days under Bolshevik guard.
In the early hours of 17 July 1918, the Imperial family and their staff were woken and told that they were being moved to a safer location. They were subsequently led into the cellar of the house and killed by the Bolsheviks.
After the execution of the Romanov family, Ipatiev House’s history was chequered. By 1923, photographs of the house were being disseminated by the Soviet press, labelling it “the last palace of the last Tsar”, and in 1927, it was designated as a branch of the Ural Revolution Museum.
Next, the house briefly became an agricultural school, before transitioning to an anti-religious museum in 1938. In 1946, ownership of the house transferred to the local Communist Party and in 1974, it was formally declared a Historical Revolutionary Monument.
However, in 1977, the 60th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the house was declared “not of sufficient historical significance” and was demolished on the orders of the local Soviet government.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Party in 1991, the Church on the Blood (pictured here), one of the largest churches in Russia, was built on the site to commemorate the canonisation of the Romanov family, who were made saints in 1981.
Perched on the banks of the Neva River, the 18th-century iteration of the Winter Palace was the fourth and final version of the official St Petersburg residence of the tsars of Russia. It was built between 1754 and 1762 and designed by celebrated Baroque architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli.
Commissioned by Empress Elizabeth, one of Peter the Great’s daughters, the project was initially intended to be an expansion of the existing third Winter Palace, which Rastrelli had designed at the behest of Elizabeth's predecessor Empress Anna. However, the architect decided to completely rebuild the structure instead.
The completion of the palace became an obsession for Elizabeth, who spared no expense on its construction despite the ongoing Seven Years’ War. Elizabeth continued to raise taxes to fund the elaborate project and speed up construction, which some estimates claim cost 2.5 million rubles.
With 460 rooms across three stories, the palace quickly became synonymous with opulence, elegance and luxury. Today, it's said to be worth $6.4 billion (£5bn).
Though now predominantly green and white, in its original form, the palace’s striking exterior was characterised by a pink façade punctuated by white columns, golden stucco mouldings and 176 sculpted figures lining the roof.
The interiors were originally Baroque in keeping with Rastrelli’s design but were remodelled in the neoclassical style by Catherine II after she assumed the throne in 1762.
Pictured here in an elegant and lavishly appointed study is Tsar Alexander II, the last of the Romanov line to truly call the palace home.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the palace underwent a series of dramatic changes. In 1837, the building’s interior was destroyed by a fire and though it was rebuilt according to Rastrelli’s plans, by the end of the 19th century, Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra had abandoned it in favour of Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, just south of St Petersburg.
During the First World War, the palace was transformed into a hospital ward for injured soldiers. In 1917, after briefly serving as the seat of Provisional Government following Nicholas II's abdication and the February Revolution – the first of the two conflicts that made up the Russian Revolution – it was ransacked by Bolshevik revolutionaries. Ultimately however, the palace was restored to its former glory in the latter part of the 19th century and today operates as the world-famous Hermitage Museum.
Situated just across the Moscow River from the Kremlin, the Kharitonenko Mansion was built in 1893 for Pavel Kharitonenko, Russia’s 'Sugar King', and his family.
The Renaissance- and Baroque-inspired building was designed by architect Vasily Zaleski and boasts an impressive edifice of white stone, embellished with intricate mouldings, an imposing columned entryway and neoclassical window casements.
Kharitonenko was a prominent entrepreneur, industrialist and patron of the Russian Empire. Having inherited the Empire’s largest sugar refinery from his father, Kharitonenko went on to amass a fortune of an estimated 60 million rubles by the time of his death in 1914. He even received hereditary nobility for his work as a state councillor to the Russian Empire in 1901.
While the home was initially Baroque in its inspiration both inside and out, its interiors were redesigned by renowned neo-Gothic architect Franz Schechtel in 1911 and still feature dark wood panelling, intricately carved medieval-style fireplaces and damask-clad walls.
However, a few of the staterooms, such as the one pictured here, were incongruously appointed in the Louis XIV style, with parquet floors, intricate cornicing and extensive gilding.
After the Revolution, the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs claimed the mansion but miraculously left the interiors intact. Because of its grandeur, the home was initially repurposed to house the families of important Soviet diplomats and later esteemed visitors such as English author H.G. Wells and American dancer Isadora Duncan.
In 1929, however, the mansion was transferred to the British Embassy, which was the first major country to establish diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R. In its new capacity, the estate went on to house the likes of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Anne, Prince Edward and Diana, Princess of Wales.
Known as the ‘Russian Parnassus’, the Ostafyevo Estate has been home to an impressive roster of Russian nobility, including the Princes Vyazemsky and Counts Sheremetev.
With its remote location 18 miles outside of Moscow and extensive, beautifully manicured gardens, the home made an ideal location for intellectual reflection and in the late 18th century, Prince Andrey Ivanovich Vyazemsky turned the house and grounds into a centre for Russian literary and cultural life.
After Vyazemsky’s death, the estate passed to his son, the poet Pyotr Vyazemsky, who continued to use the estate to host literary luminaries including the likes of poet and playwright Alexander Pushkin and novelist Nikolai Gogol.
In 1888, the estate was purchased by Count Sergey Dmitriyevich Sheremetev, a military aide to the late Emperor Alexander III and a member of the Imperial State Council. Sheremetev understood the historical and literary importance of the state and worked to turn it into a museum, installing monuments throughout the grounds.
He is pictured here unveiling a monument to the historian, poet and romantic writer Nikolai M. Karamzin.
The peaceful bubble of the Ostafyevo Estate soon burst when the Revolution began. In 1918, the Count was arrested by the Bolsheviks along with his family. Already in poor health at the age of 73, he died in captivity.
After the Russian Revolution, the museum closed and the estate was later transformed into a health resort. Its interiors were completely altered to accommodate its new function and its collections were sadly dispersed among different USSR museums.
However, in 1989, the Ostafyevo Estate Museum was restored and reopened to the public once more. With four permanent and five temporary exhibitions, the museum now displays memorabilia from both the Vyazemsky and Sheremetev families, alongside collections of books, magazines and almanacs. The museum is considered one of Russia’s leading cultural attractions, drawing swathes of visitors each year.
Formerly a summer residence in the 18th century for the House of Golitsyn, a Russian noble family, the Arkhangelskoye Estate in Russia's Krasnogorsky District is more famously associated with Prince Nikolai Yusupov. A patron of the arts and a member of one of the richest families in Russia, he purchased the estate in the early 19th century.
The Prince hired French architect Jacob Guerne to design the neoclassical main palace and invited Italian designer Giacomo Trombaro to create the surrounding parklands. Construction took place between 1786 and 1790 and the scale of the estate was so grand that it became known as the “Russian Versailles".
Prince Yusupov – pictured here at a hunting party alongside many other Russian aristocrats – was an avid art collector, linguist and traveller. He had visited much of Europe serving as a diplomat and had conversed with many prominent figures of the age, including Voltaire, Frederick the Great and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
The consummate host, he would invite parties of up to 500 guests to the palace for various celebrations. Guests that visited the estate over the decades included famous writers and artists as well as Emperors Alexander I, Nikolay I, Alexander II, Alexander III and Nikolay II.
After the death of Prince Nikolai Yusupov in 1831, Arkhangelskoye Estate remained in the Yusupov family.
However, all of this luxury and splendour came to a crashing halt with the onset of the Revolution. The Yusupov family was forced to leave the estate in 1917, which was subsequently nationalised by the Bolsheviks and radically altered to suit the needs of the new regime.
The estate was repurposed numerous times over the following decades before it was closed down in 1985 to allow urgent repairs to take place. Unfortunately, it was some time until the building received the attention it so badly needed.
Luckily, with the help of a number of grants secured by the World Monuments Fund, the estate was renovated and reopened as a museum in the early 2000s.
In addition to the palace itself, which includes wings for both an art gallery and a library, Yusupov also commissioned the construction of a theatre, a tea house, a ‘pink fountain pavilion’, a miniature palace folly and the Church of Archangel Michael, a tiered structure from which the entire estate derives its name.
These remarkable structures have all been preserved for future generations and provide an illuminating glimpse into life during Russia’s Gilded Age.
Constructed in an eclectic combination of Baroque, classical and Art Nouveau styles, the Aseev Manor in Russia's Tambov region was commissioned in the late 19th century and designed by famed Russian architect Lev Kekushev.
The mansion was built for Mikhail Vasilyevich Aseev, a merchant, manufacturer, industrialist and philanthropist. Aseev was considered a patriot of Imperial Russia, whose contributions to his country were deemed so substantial that in 1916, the year before the Revolution, the Emperor appointed him a nobleman in recognition of his services.
Aseev was, first and foremost, a factory owner, whose primary business interest was supplying cloth to the military for making uniforms. It was the fortune garnered from this industry that enabled him to build such an impressive estate.
Though each part of the building was built in its own unique architectural style, when married together, the ultimate effect was an elegant, tiered home, surrounded by a well-manicured park.
However, when the Revolution came, Aseev’s factories, land holdings and home were seized by the Bolsheviks. Under threat due to his recently accrued nobility, Aseev and his wife were reportedly forced to flee Tambov to Moscow and ultimately move abroad, where he would live out the rest of his days in exile.
In the spring of 1918, the Aseev Estate was transformed into a summer colony for poor children. It was then repurposed as an orphanage in the 1920s, before becoming a health centre in the 1930s.
During the latter part of the 20th century, the house fell into a state of disrepair, with collapsing ceilings, mouldy façades and crumbling staircases.
It was not until 2014 that the house was reopened as a museum after years of restoration, coinciding with the anniversary of the founding of the Tambov region. The museum is designed to recreate life as it might have been in a Russian manor house in the early 20th century.
Situated in the village of Belogorka in Leningrad Oblast, this sprawling Russian Art Nouveau-style estate was named after its first owner Franz Franzevich Bell, who was a marshal of the nobility, an elected position in local Russian governments prior to the Revolution.
Bell reportedly bought the village of Novaya Siverskaya on the bank of the Oredezh River in 1799 and set about cultivating the land and building an estate.
In 1898, the estate was purchased by wealthy merchant A. G. Eliseev for his daughter, and in the early 1900s, a new stone palace was built in place of the older wooden manor house.
The sprawling palace featured turrets and ornate architecture, as well as a stately landscaped park and a stone church in the traditional Russian style built by the architect Stepan Fyodorovich Ovsyanikov.
When the Russian Revolution began in 1917, the estate was nationalised and turned into an agricultural commune and state farm. Later in 1923, the manor house was transformed into a children’s colony (pictured here).
By 1929, the estate and its grounds had been repurposed as the Institute of Experimental Agrochemistry, a scientific agricultural facility. However, in a dramatic turn of events, the manor house was blown up during the Second World War, with the roof and ceilings destroyed and the interiors ruined.
The house was restored in 1948 for continued use as an experimental farm and scientific headquarters before the building was deserted in 1993 and rapidly began to fall into a state of disrepair.
Many unsuccessful attempts have been made over the years to restore the building and convert it into a museum. Sadly, the estate remains shuttered and empty, a ghostly reminder of a closed chapter in Russian history.
This majestic stone ruin, once the home of tsarist colonel Andrey Valerianovich Kvitko and his wealthy Italian wife, sits perched overlooking the Black Sea in the Sochi region.
Interestingly, the mansion is said to have been designed as a smaller replica of a grand villa belonging to Kvito’s wife’s family, who owned two stately homes in Italy.
The home was completed in 1916, which meant that in spite of the immense effort and planning that went into its construction, the couple was only able to call it home for a brief period of time before the Revolution.
Reportedly a descendant of a noble Cossack family, Kvitko was forced to flee Russia with his wife to her native Italy, leaving the newly finished palace in the hands of the new Russian authorities.
With its crenulations and dramatic turrets, the mansion was ill-suited to its new life as a Soviet complex, but nevertheless, it is said to have been repurposed first as a colony for troubled teenagers and then used as a holiday home.
Like many stately homes across Europe, the dacha became a hospital during the Second World War. Once the war was over, equipped as it was for medical purposes, it was used as a sanitorium.
In the 1980s, renovation work began on the mansion, which had fallen into dilapidation. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, all the funding for the project disappeared, resulting in the abandonment of the building. Without a roof and exposed to the elements, the palace quickly fell prey to looters and Mother Nature.
While officials have planned to restore the estate for years, the substantial cost has stalled progress and the property remains derelict and an ever-popular hotspot for urban explorers.
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