Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve

This guide to Tsaritsyno in Moscow follows Catherine the Great's strange brief to architect Vasily Bazhenov: build her a summer residence as two matching palaces instead of one. You'll hear about her single visit to the finished estate in 1785, the reaction that ended Bazhenov's career on the spot, and how his own student was handed the ruins with new instructions. The estate's unfinished state would outlast two more rulers before the city finally completed it in 2007.