Yasnaya Polyana, Historic estate in Tula Oblast, Russia
Yasnaya Polyana is a 400-hectare estate 12 km southwest of Tula. Its single-storey manor house, built by Prince Nikolai Volkonsky from 1810 and raised by a second storey under Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, stands at the highest point between two two-storey wings. The grounds hold a formal French garden, an English landscape garden with a cascade of four ponds, and long avenues of birch and oak.
The village of Yasnaya Polyana is first recorded in a 1652 survey book, when it belonged to Grigory Kartsev, a frontier voivode. In 1763 Prince Sergei Volkonsky bought part of it; his son Nikolai assembled the estate, built the manor and outbuildings, and laid out the parks and ponds. Through the marriage of Nikolai's daughter Maria to Count Nikolai Tolstoy the estate passed to the Tolstoy family, and Leo Tolstoy was born there on 9 September 1828.
The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy spent most of his life here and composed his major literary works at this location. His private library with more than twenty thousand volumes remains in the main building and shows the author's broad interest in philosophy and world literature.
The grounds open from November through April between nine in the morning and five in the afternoon, while from May through October they remain accessible from eight in the morning until eight at night. Mondays are reserved for maintenance work and the site stays closed.
Leo Tolstoy lies buried in a section of the Old Zakaz forest with no monument or cross marking the spot. He wished to rest at the location where, according to a family legend, a green stick held the secret of happiness.
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