Yasnaya Polyana

About this place

Yasnaya Polyana, «Bright Glade», is the house museum of the writer Leo Tolstoy, about 12 km southwest of Tula and 200 km from Moscow. Tolstoy was born in this house, wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina here, and is buried nearby. Tolstoy called Yasnaya Polyana his «inaccessible literary stronghold». In June 1921 the estate became the Tolstoy museum-estate and nature reserve, first run by his daughter Alexandra. The museum holds Tolstoy's personal belongings and his library of 22,000 volumes, and the estate includes the writer's house, the school he founded for peasant children and a park with his simple, unmarked grave. Tall woods, long tree-shaded avenues, wide green meadows and quiet ponds spread across the estate, with old wooden buildings at the forest's edge. In winter snow covers the meadows and ponds. Visitors walk the estate's avenues and woods, go into Tolstoy's house and museum and visit his grave in the forest. It is peaceful and good for a long walk, and makes a day trip from Tula or Moscow. The UK Foreign Office advises against all travel to Russia, and non-Russian bank cards may not work, so read the current advice before you plan.