Ekaterininsky tract (Old Kaluga road): description, history and interesting facts

From the Moscow trade-union street, passing the Moscow Ring Road, the famous Catherine Route begins, in other words - the Old Kaluga road, and a bit aside - the federal highway "Moscow-Belarus" (A101). On its length is history itself, such cities as Roslavl, Yukhnov, Kaluga, Medyn, Maloyaroslavets, Obninsk, Balabanovo, Troitsk, as well as many small settlements, no less glorious and even more deeply rooted in ancient times.

Start

The Catherine's tract existed from the end of the fourteenth century, but was known as the Old Kaluga Road, since the reign of Catherine will happen much later. On it Muscovites traveled to Kaluga, and Kaluga residents to Moscow. The dangerous road was for those times, not protected. It was the Catherine tract that led to Moscow various invaders from the south and west, all the most ruinous raids committed from this side.

Finally, in the 1370s, on the approaches to the capital, a new defensive line rose, which could safely block this direction, the city of Kaluga. And then the Catherine tract blossomed, like a river with lilies, small villages on both its banks.

Neighborhood

The nature here is picturesque! This is why the district liked this most prominent people in Moscow. Since the seventeenth century, the princes and boyars chose the land for a family estate where the Catherine Route passed. Constructed and nobles, and wealthy merchants, as well as the learned class. As they say, prominent figures of science, culture, and art have left their traces here, including members of the creative intelligentsia.

We must admit that even in the Soviet era, interest in the beauties of the Kaluga land did not fade. Until now, the old Catherine tract is a favorite place for fun "pokatushki" inquisitive cyclists of a young age. The history of this marvelous region attracts older people who are getting to the local sights on jeeps.

Maloyaroslavets

Over the centuries, the land here has seen all the wars that the country had to endure, and was devastated more than others. Nevertheless, where there was the Catherine tract, there were many amazing old estates, estates, churches, monasteries. For example, the gates of the St. Nicholas women's monastery in Chernoostrovsky in Maloyaroslavets keep traces of the gunshots of the Napoleonic army.

This is such an obvious sign for the unbelievers! The fragments of the nuclei and the kartachi thickly passed through the entire surface of the gates, to the very image of Christ, and only his face was miraculously unscathed. Huge potholes are visible even now. But Christ is still looking at the world - and gently, and vzyskusche.

Valuev and Krasnoe

Many monuments of Russian history have been preserved by the Catherine's tract! The Moscow region and Kaluga were incredibly rich in sights. You can judge by what remained. For example, the estate of Valuev built in the seventeenth century. The architecture of stunning beauty, not without reason here at different times lived princes and courtiers, counts and marshals: Meshchersky, Tolstoy, Shepelev and Musin-Pushkin.

No less beautiful is the manor Krasnoe, founded in the early eighteenth century. This village was presented to the Tsarevich Alexander without the manor, then Saltykovs settled here, and in 1812 Mikhail Kutuzov changed the situation of the war radically here. It's only twenty-five kilometers from Moscow.

We go further

Nearby, also in twenty-five kilometers, the place of the settlement of Alexandrovo, where the patrimony of the famous Morozovs was (remember the eyes of the boyaryni from the picture of Surikov), it is mentioned in monuments since 1607. Here already in the second half of the eighteenth century another farmstead, Shchapovo, was founded, which was founded by the brothers Grushevsky.

And a little later there appeared the Decembrist nest - the estate was owned by Muravyov the Apostle, whose three sons went to the Senate Square. Then there lived the famous hero of the Patriotic War Arseniev, and from 1890 - the manufacturer Shchapov. After two kilometers, you'll need to stop again. The Catherine Route is a route with surprises.

More Famous Manors

The Polivanovo estate is also famous for the architecture of the seventeenth century, which later was considerably improved by Count Razumovsky. Thirty-seven kilometers from Moscow is Dubrovitsy. This is not only an architectural masterpiece, but also a landscape masterpiece. An ensemble of stunning beauty. This area is known in documents since 1182, when it was ruled by Prince Gleb Turovsky. And the estate was mentioned for the first time in 1627. The founder named boyar Ivan Morozov. At different times the princes of Golitsyn and Potemkin-Tavriches lived here.

Nearby, two kilometers away, Mikhailovskoye - a manor founded by General Krechetnikov in 1776. The village was called Krasheninnikovo. Later this place was owned by Count Sheremetiev, who did a lot to restore dilapidated buildings. And finally, thirty-eight kilometers from Moscow, the famous Voronovo estate, burned in 1812, so that the French would not get it. Earlier, in 1775, Catherine the Great herself visited this place, and why the Old Kaluga road began to be called otherwise. This is the history of the Catherine tract.

Today

The land of the Old Kaluga Road probably remembers everything that happened along the way, and from time to time even to our contemporaries makes it clear that not all of its riddles are solved and not all the secrets are revealed. Not one story of eyewitnesses exists on the Internet that this road is shining from within moonless nights. As if hinting at the number of not-trodden, and sometimes unburied, uninvited souls, which remained on its side of the road. By the way, finding this old road today is not so easy. There are countless settlements, the main Kaluzhskoe highway passes aside, and it has not been used by anyone for many years.

Birches

You can find it by special signs. The end of the eighteenth century was the beginning of a huge construction, including road construction. Catherine the Great issued a special decree, thanks to which all the big roads were accompanied by birch alleys on both sides. A beautiful decree! Do not fear any heat, nor snow drifts to travelers.

Birches for the Catherine tract were chosen with special - with a dark crust, huge hollows and curved powerful branches, out of a hundred and twenty species it was chosen that way. For the most part, the first trees have long since died, but there is a clearing that has not overgrown, and probably will not grow. The road for so many centuries was so trampled that it does not grow on it. And the grooves along the roadside along the road flow, clearly preserving the distance.

Kaluzhskoe highway and the neighborhood of the old road

This route runs a little apart from the Catherine's tract, which left behind only a direction that can be guessed on even rows of grown trees and is remembered together with a song that the head of the Hercules from the Golden Calf did not have. And Kaluzhskoe highway is a beautiful four-lane highway, well lit and cherished by road repairmen. Landscapes around the purely near Moscow: impenetrable forests - then conifers, then mixed - interspersed with light birch groves.

Then suddenly there are picturesque plains and hills, escorting the traveler to the river valleys, which are quite numerous. There are not only reservoirs. And the rivers are wonderful, each in its own way: Nara, Kremenka, Polyanitsa, Desna ... Besides them, there are a lot of ponds and lakes with fish, both large and small. There is no railway nearby, and therefore quite a few places, the civilization affected only slightly. Large industry in this region is also absent, environmentally friendly, and the social environment historically has developed uniformly. But, as noted by those who visited it, the infrastructure is well developed everywhere.

Matches and discrepancies

Ekaterininsky highway coincides with the new highway to the Big Ring of the railway, near the village of Lviv. The most interesting thing here is that the Kaluga Highway does not go to Kaluga, but to Belarus.

It turned out so because in the Crosses it crossed the road from Podolsk to the west - the former Warsaw road. When the railway ring was built, the role of the Kiev highway was significantly strengthened, and therefore the section of the old road from Krestov to Kaluga itself gradually ceased to exist.

Two wars

Lovers of history are interested in the Old Kaluga road, mainly because it was here that the most important battles took place at first in the Patriotic War of 1812, and then in the Great Patriotic War. Napoleon decided to retreat from the burned down Moscow precisely along the Catherine's tract, since the local area had not yet been plundered. On their way lay cities and scales, untouched by war. But Kutuzov first gave a battle near the village of Tarutino, and then at Maloyaroslavets, which put on the Napoleonic plans a large Orthodox cross.

And in 1941 the Old Kaluga road moaned under the tanks of the Wehrmacht units, when most of the settlements along the tract were burnt to the ground and abandoned by the inhabitants. The hottest battles took place then on the ferry near Kuzovlevo across the Chernichku river. Now there is a memorial complex with a mass grave, where the defenders of Moscow are buried, they destroyed another plan to seize Russia, this time Hitler's "Barbarossa".