The author of the project “Terema of Russia” Maria Savina traveled all over the country and took photos of masterpieces of wooden architecture.
Fancy silhouette, rich carved decor, roof with tents. If you see a similar house resembling a palace from a Russian fairy tale, know that it is a tower. Most of them were built at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, when the “Russian style” was in fashion. More often they were built as cottages by large manufacturers or merchants (often they were wealthy immigrants from the peasant class).
In 1878, at the World’s Fair in Paris, architect Ivan Ropet built the pavilion of the Russian Empire in the form of a wooden terem palace, making it a real business card of the country.
Sketch of the Ropet Tower for the World’s Fair in Paris Public Domain
Once, while traveling in the Kostroma region, photographer Maria Savina saw one of these towers. He impressed the girl so much that she spent the next two years on an expedition throughout Russia in search of similar buildings. She took hundreds of pictures of the most expressive buildings. This is how the project and the book “Terem of Russia” were born (The first volume dedicated to the most beautiful wooden treasures of Central Russia and the Volga region was published in Eksmo in 2024).
1. The tower in Astashov. Chukhlomsky district, Kostroma region
Perhaps the most famous tower in Russia. It was built in 1897 by a local peasant, Martian Sazonov, according to a sketch by Ivan Ropet himself. In the 2010s, enthusiasts restored the already dilapidated tower and turned it into a Russian-style hotel.
2. Ropeta bathhouse in Abramtsevo, Moscow region
The estate of the large industrialist Savva Mamontov near Moscow was a real, as they would say today, art residence. The Russian style was literally “forged” here – famous artists from the Vasnetsov brothers to Ilya Repin worked. And Ivan Ropet, who made the terem famous all over the world, built such a fabulous bathhouse for the estate.
3. Viktor Vasnetsov’s Terem in Moscow
“Something in between a modern peasant hut and an ancient princely terem,” singer Fyodor Chaliapin spoke enthusiastically about the house of Viktor Vasnetsov. It was thanks to the fabulous artist Vasnetsov that the aesthetics of the Russian style was largely formed. He built his own house in the same style in 1894. Today there is an artist’s museum there.
4. Bugrov’s cottage in Volodarsk, Nizhny Novgorod region
The hereditary flour merchant Nikolai Bugrov was so influential that he was even called the “uncrowned king of Nizhny Novgorod.” It is not known who exactly built the tower for him. But it is known that even the Finance minister of tsarist Russia, Sergei Witte, visited this cottage. It was Bugrov who persuaded him to hold a large-scale All-Russian Industrial and Art exhibition in 1896 not in Moscow, but in Nizhny Novgorod.
5. The tower in Kulebaki, Nizhny Novgorod region
This tower is the main attraction of the small town of Kulebaki. He is even depicted on his coat of arms. It was built at the end of the XIX century as a House for folk entertainment at the Kulebak mining plant, specifically to entertain workers and craftsmen.
6. Bakhteev’s House in Kazan
There is an amazing pink tower in the area of the Staro-Tatarskaya Sloboda of Kazan. The house was built in 1903-1906 and belonged to Safa Bakhteev, a haberdashery merchant. Its current appearance is restored after the great fire. In many towers of Tatarstan, elements of traditional Tatar ornaments are mixed into the Russian style.
7. House with mermaids in the Vladimir region
The house of the honorary citizen of Gorokhovets Fedor Prishletsov is an example of how elements of Western Art Nouveau are added to the Russian style. The main feature of the tower, in addition to its unusual shape, is carved platbands, which depict fantastic creatures: mermaids and lions. By the way, it is now an apartment building.
8. The house of merchant Gordeev in Rybinsk, Yaroslavl region.
This is no longer just a tower, but a whole wooden mansion. The patterned platbands are decorated in the Russian Baroque style. Its owner, Semyon Gordeev, became rich in the bread and real estate trade. After his death in 1905, the terem became an apartment building – and in Soviet times there was a communal apartment. Today the house is residential and mostly artists settled there, who were engaged in the restoration and restoration of the building.
9. Summer club of the Noble Assembly in Ryazan
In 1905, this lace tower was built in the Lower City Garden of Ryazan, the territory of which once belonged to the local millionaire Gavrila Ryumin. The building was erected for itself by a local noble assembly – at the expense of local nobles as a summer club.
10. Sergey Malyutin’s terem in Flenovo, Smolensk region
This fabulous terem with carved window shutters, brackets in the form of Serpent heads and stoves with painted tiles was designed at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries by the artist and specialist in Russian decorative and applied art Sergey Malyutin. The brick base is laid out in the shape of “chicken legs”, like Baba Yaga’s hut from fairy tales. Russian Russian philanthropist and lover Maria Tenisheva became the customer – he built a whole complex of buildings in the Russian style in her Smolensk estate.
11. Kalikins’ estate in Galich, Kostroma region
The 1911 building belonged to Alexander Kalikin, one of the peasant dynasty of leather manufacturers. The Russian style here is combined with modernity, which is actively coming into fashion. Characteristic features are a floral ornament and a roof with a ridge (a similar one can be seen, for example, at the Yaroslavsky railway station in Moscow).
12. Akhunsky teremas near Penza
Sturgeon House
Since the end of the XIX century, wealthy merchants, timber manufacturers, officials, and manufacturers have settled in the quiet picturesque suburb of Penza Akhuna. They built several teremes in the Russian style. Three houses of merchants Osetrov, Zhuravlev and Ashanin have been well preserved to this day.
Zhuravlev’s house is on the left, Ashanin’s on the right
They have similar architecture and decor: stone foundations, mezzanines, open terraces, a similar pattern of window frames. Today they are located on the territory of the sanatorium.
13. The Luzhins’ House in Kimry, Tver region
The Luzhin grain merchants’ camp in the town of Kimry, even before the revolution, was considered so unusual and original that it appeared on postcards with views of the Tver province. A merchant who traded with St. Petersburg spied the idea in a magazine – in one of the photos he was very impressed by the huge porthole windows in the estate “Peschanka” in Gatchina (the house is now lost).
The sauna in the estate of Baron von Kruse “Gerbil”. Photos from the Architectural Museum magazine, 1910
Today there is a shoe store in the tower in Kimry.
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