Gostilitsy, Russia

History

The area currently west of Saint Petersburg, including Gostilitsy, was transferred to Sweden in 1617, according to the Treaty of Stolbovo, and it was conquered back by Russia in 1703, during the Great Northern War. After the war, it was first granted to Robert Areskin, the personal doctor of Tsar Peter the Great, and then changed hands several times. One of the owners in the 1720s was Alexander Menshikov. In the middle of the 18th century, it belonged to Alexey Razumovsky, who built in Gostilitsy a palace which was to serve the royal family when they were travelling from Saint Petersburg.

In the 1845, when the estate belonged to Colonel Alexander Potyomkin, the owners decided to renovate the estate and invited the architect Andrei Stackenschneider, who fully redesigned the palace and made the landscape park around it.

Between August 1941 and January 1944, during World War II, Gostilitsy was at the edge of the Oranienbaum Bridgehead, the territory adjacent to Leningrad and held by the Soviet troops. The estate was severely damaged and was not restored after the war. As of 2012, Gostilitsy Estate was deserted and at the verge of collapse.

From the History section of Gostilitsy on Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0.