Where, where? In Non-Moscow! The village of Paradise.
There are many unusual names on the map of the country: for example, the village Freezer and the village Greedy people, and recently we talked about the village Yes Yes and almost uninhabited village PyramidToday we're heading straight to Paradise chain!
📍You can get to Paradise while you're still alive - take the P120 highway, stopping just 6 kilometers away from Smolensk. Located A village in the Smolensk region, not far from the border with Belarus. The villagers introduce themselves simply: "I live in Paradise." And they're not being disingenuous at all.
📍All started from a German knight Jacob von LehrHe first entered the service of the Polish King Władysław IV and received lands in the Smolensk district. In 1654, the lands were ceded to the Russian state, and von Lehr entered the service of the Russian Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. He converted to Orthodoxy and became Peter Vonlyarlyarsky. His descendant Alexander Vonlyarlyarsky At the beginning of the 19th century he built an estate on these lands.
📍Estate consistedA house with twenty spacious rooms, a library, several halls, and rooms containing tiled Dutch stoves. The courtyard featured a covered gallery, and nearby was a park with long birch and linden alleys, a large pond, and gazebos. A stone Orthodox church dedicated to the Kazan Icon of Our Lady was also built here. According to some sources, the church contained a very valuable iconostasis. A three-tiered bell tower was later erected near the church, connected to the church by a walkway. Vonlyarlyarsky admired the beauty of his estate and called it "Paradise."
At the beginning of the next century, the Bolsheviks came to power, plundered and destroyed Rai. All that remained were the church (which served as a fertilizer warehouse), the bell tower, and the school building.
📍Now local parishioners trying to restore Church, where services are held on the feast of Our Lady of Kazan. The "Paradise" restaurant and hotel complex has opened, and Smolensk residents are actively building country houses there.
📍Paradise also inspires creative people. Journalist and writer Natalia Klyuchareva wrote a story about the local residents, "One Year in Paradise," and Yulia Vishnevetskaya and Maxim Pakhomov filmed documentary "Village Paradise".
Photo: Yandex Maps, archive photos
