Located 14km south of central Tula, Yasnaya Polyana is billed as a ‘typical Russian estate’ of the late 19th century, which it is save for one important fact: this is where Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, was born, lived most of his life and is buried.
A long birch-lined avenue leads from the entrance to the whitewashed, modestly proportioned Tolstoy House, where the great writer lived and worked. The rooms have been kept just as they were at the time of his death in 1910, with portraits, books, furniture and even some of Tolstoy’s clothes laid out. Nearby in the Kuzminsky House is an imaginatively designed exhibition covering the range of things that inspired Tolstoy from 1851 to 1869 when he finished War and Peace. Deep into the estate’s shady forest is Tolstoy’s grave, unmarked - as per his request - except for bouquets of flowers left by admirers.
