Moscow Travel Guide

Yasnaya Polyana

Located 120 miles (200km) from Moscow, Yasnaya Polyana is the estate where Lev Tokstoy was born in 1828. In 1921, the property became a memorial to the celebrated author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and contains a museum with his personal effects and library of nearly 22,000 volumes. Nearly a century later, the museum is still run by Tolstoy's descendants.

Tolstoy spent 60 years living at Yasnaya Polyana with his family, and each of his 13 children were born there (although four died at young ages). He founded a working farm and children's school on the estate, and is still buried in an area called the Forest of the Old Order (so called because it was forbidden to cut down trees there).