What to see in Nizhny Novgorod, in detail tell directories, guides and brochures of numerous travel agencies. One of the oldest cities in Europe every year attracts an increasing number of tourists. The history of Nizhny Novgorod is very interesting, especially the pages related to merchants.
Famous last name
The surname Rukavishnikov in Russia is very famous - millionaire patrons, writers, poets, artists and an astronaut. In tsarist times, there were at least two famous dynasties, one of them Nizhny Novgorod. They left a memory of themselves, not only in literature and reference books. Remained a beautiful estate Rukavishnikova. Nizhny Novgorod in its vicinity (in the village of Podvyazye, Bogorodsky district) has another estate bearing the name of the dynasty, which is also a historical and architectural monument. Obviously, you can specify the town or village in which it is located in parentheses to clarify what kind of mansion in question.
"From dirt to Kings"
The Rukavishnikovs dynasty, related to Nizhny Novgorod, began with Mikhail Grigorievich (1811-1874), who was a merchant of the first guild, was a member of the board of trustees for prisons. In addition, he was awarded the honorary title of manufactory-adviser, which corresponded to class VIII in the ranking table and gave the right to hereditary nobility (Mikhail Grigoryevich’s grandfather was a simple serf who earned the initial capital thanks to his ingenuity). The title was awarded to large industrialists and merchants of Russia. According to other sources, the founder of the dynasty was the owner of the first steel mill in this city and a large interest-bearing loan shark.
Estate for interest
As a result of this particular type of his versatile activity, the mansion of the merchant of the third guild Serapion Vezlomtsev, who in our time is known as the Rukavishnikovs Estate Museum, went to him in debt in 1740. Nizhny Novgorod, the fifth largest city in Russia, and in those days was not a contingent town. Novgorod merchants even of the third guild could afford to have mansions in which the richest family of the city will then live for 37 years. One of the sons who followed in the footsteps of his father, namely Sergei Mikhailovich Rukavishnikov, being not only a millionaire, but one of the richest people in Russia, decided to rebuild the mansion, turning it into a palace.
“By merchant and goods”
For this purpose, the architect P. S. Boytsov was invited, and artist M.O. Mikeshin, a specialist in the palace decoration of the estates, was discharged from St. Petersburg. The goal set before the masters is to show and emphasize the capabilities and power of the owner as much as possible. The attached wings and the 3rd floor erected together with the old house should have provided 50 rooms in which a family of 8 people would live. The goal was achieved, it was this mansion on the Verkhne-Volzhskaya embankment, known as the Rukavishnikov estate (Nizhny Novgorod), for many years (the presentation took place in 1877) that became the most luxurious house in the city, famous far beyond the borders of the Nizhny Novgorod province.
Luxury as self-affirmation
The palace was in no way inferior to the capital's brothers. There was everything that embodied luxury - a marble staircase and atlantes supporting a balcony, a courtyard with a fountain and a veranda, resulting from the continuation of the second floor of a two-story stone wing. The facade was decorated with high relief (a figure on a plane protrudes more than half the volume) images of caryatids, rich stucco molding and painting. His palaces were related by a two-tone, white-blue color. Even in the capitals, the general artistic integrity of the mansion, the high aesthetic quality of the interiors, the style and richness of the building's finishes, its architectural features were discussed. In a word, the estate of Rukavishnikov (Nizhny Novgorod) has become a "talk of the town."
“We will go the other way …”
However, the sons of Sergei Mikhailovich, Ivan and Mitrofan, who grew up in this luxury, not only did not follow in the footsteps of his father (one became a writer, the second sculptor), so the first of them, a prose writer and a symbolist poet, wrote the novel “Cursed Family”, which became as they would say now, a bestseller and stripping him of his millionth inheritance. Among the poets of the Silver Age, Ivan Rukavishnikov was considered the “master of the trio” (a poem of eight verses for two rhymes), well, that is, he is not a merchant at all. His brother Mitrofan, who became a famous sculptor, is famous for the fact that, together with Koltsov, they made gypsum pieces of muses for niches of the Bolshoi Theater after their destruction in 1942 as a result of a bomb.
Monument House
The family broke up, but the house remained, and did not even suffer during the revolution, and in 1924 the mansion on the Nizhny Novgorod Descent became a local history museum and never changed owners. Unless it was renamed the Nizhny Novgorod State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve. The perestroika years did not pass him by - since 1994, the mansion was closed for 16 years. And now, beautifully restored, in 2010 it opens its doors to visitors and becomes one of the main attractions of the city. The people call it the Rukavishnikovs Museum, because both Mitrofan and Ivan Sergeyevich did everything they could to open it in 1896 (first in the Dmitrievskaya tower of the Kremlin). In its present form, the mansion restored in all its splendor is a very well-preserved large urban manor complex dating back to the last third of the 19th century. Its funds number 300 thousand copies accumulated over almost a 100-year history of existence, and 8 branches are scattered throughout the region.
"… Okay, over the sea, il is bad, and what a miracle in the world …"
The estate of Rukavishnikov (Nizhny Novgorod) itself is a memory of successful merchants - in some halls there is an ongoing exhibition called “Decent to be at your own bidding …”. Of course, the mansions should have been consistent with the turnover of capital and the position of the owner in society. The exhibition tells about the brightest Novgorod merchants and entrepreneurs - Kamensky, Sirotkin and Rukavishnikovs. Russia (especially Novgorod) has always been famous for merchants. He was sung in epics (the legendary Novgorod merchant Sadko). Often, merchants were diplomats and pioneers (Athanasius Nikitin), very often patrons (Tretyakov, Morozov, Schukin brothers - all come from the merchants or the "dark kingdom" according to Dobrolyubov).
Another no less famous possession
As noted above, in the Novgorod region there was another estate of the Rukavishnikovs. Podvyazye is a village located 15 km from the regional center of Bogorodsk. The story of her last appearance is the same as that of the city. The Millionaire Sergey Rukavishnikov buys the estate from the nobles of Priklonsky and rebuilds it according to his status and understanding of the world. But this did not happen right away, but only in 1879. Since the beginning of the 16th century, the estate belonged to the Skolkov boyars, the first owner of the Prilonsky family was Mikhail Vasilievich, back in the 18th century he was the director of Moscow University, and his last mistress (the woman is not poor at all, her husband Kozlov competed with Sheremetyev’s neighbor) flatly refused to sell “ noble nest ”to the servile descendant.
Beautiful object, waiting for the restoration
The Rukavishnikovs estate (Bogorodsky district) is no less famous than the estate on the Upper Volga embankment. The glorious Russian noble family of Priklonsky, among whom there were also Decembrists, remained in the history of the estate, which is called so - the Estate of Priklonsky-Rukavishnikovs. So, in honor of the victory over Napoleon, the then-rotund temple, unusual for Orthodoxy, was built on the territory of the family nest by the then owner Andrei Priklonsky. However, the new owner, remembering the insult inflicted on him, rebuilt almost everything with his usual scope. At least such a fact speaks of the unusual luxury of the estate. There were four greenhouses, equipped in accordance with the latest scientific and technical capabilities of the time. To the envy of all the neighbors, especially the famous agronomist-breeder A.V. Portugalov, the most outlandish vegetables and fruits grew here. Now this unique, fabulous beauty (which can be judged even by such smallness as the surviving part of the main entrance), the estate is waiting for its restoration.
Soviet page
In addition to the legendary possessions of the merchants Rukavishnikovs, there is much more to look at in Nizhny Novgorod. Dozens of interesting objects are visited daily by thousands of tourists. This is the House of Peter the Great and the “House of Kashirin”, described in Gorky’s “Childhood”, the Mikhailo-Arkhangelsk Cathedral and the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, the museums of the Nizhny Novgorod intelligentsia and the River Fleet, A. D. Sakharov and the Nizhny Novgorod Art. There are monuments to Chkalov, Evstigneev, Minin and Pozharsky. And, of course, in Nizhny Novgorod, a lot is connected with Maxim Gorky, whose name the village bore from 1932 to 1990. "Under the city of Gorky, where there are clear dawns …" - even the current generation is familiar with this line from the most popular song once. But the fame of Nizhny Novgorod boomed throughout the country long before the birth of the great proletarian writer.
