“Zaklyuchye†is a very beautiful estate right in-between St. Petersburg and Moscow. It is situated in about 40 km from the highway and the shortest way to get there – from Moscow by a dirt road where not any car can go as the snow on some parts is too high, but the views around are so picturesque that you forget about everything – that is what the real Russian winter must be!

“Zaklyuchye†estate is located in the scenic woodland, on a high shore of a little lake.

It used to belong to a St. Petersburg architect A.S. Khrenov and was built in the end of the 19^th century, probably, upon his own project. Currently the estate is being unhurriedly restored – most bridgings have been changed and one of the collapsed walls of the second floor has been re-edified.

Approximately in 1904 Khrenov established a stud farm here for pedigreed horses breeding. The porch was glazed already in the Soviet time.

Inhabitable structures of the estate are located on the high range of hills skirted by a dirt road. In the southern part of the hills representing an even terrace is a main house facing the lake with its eastern façade. The main house was built of bricks with a high use of boulders in the laying. The building has a complex asymmetrical form.

In front of the main façade is a parterre where still remained an old birch and flowerbeds surrounded by concrete parapets: a round one in the centre and two triangle ones – concave and short – on each side. Two more semicircular flowerbeds are settled on the sides of the path in front of the southern façade of the house. From the south the edge of the terrace is arranged with a high bouldery abamurus with two “bulwarks†of trihedral and semicircular shape.

Enclose pattern – similar on both floors – free and asymmetric.

On the second floor, in the tower, there is a spiral stair up and a balcony.

The front door in the tower and a corresponding aperture open into another room reveal a diagonal axis of the layout. Numerous new partitions disturbed the initial interconnection of the rooms.

In the Soviet time there was a Pioneer camp in the estate, for that time it was rather common.

The view from the window on the second floor.

On the roof.

To the north from the house, on the higher place, there is a dwelling out-house, and in front of its southern façade there remained an octahedral fountain with a bouldery wall. The northern part of the range is overgrown with conifers.

This tank house also appeared in the Soviet time.

Stone stairs in the park.