Akademicheskaya Dacha

In a broader sense, the Akademicheskaya Dacha (or "Akademichka") refers to the entire surrounding area including villages of Bolshoy Gorodok, Maliy Gorodok, Kisharino, Terpigorevo, Valentinovka and Podol, where many Russian artists resided in the mid-second half of the 20th century.

The Akademicheskaya Dacha was opened on July 22, 1884, as a place of summer practice for poor students of the Imperial Academy of Arts.

The exceptional role in Dacha's organization were the "Academic cottages" belonging to her guardian Vasily Kokorev, a major industrialist, and the owner of one of the largest collections of Russian and Western European art.

Before the October Revolution of 1917, many famous Russian artists worked on the Akademicheskaya Dacha, including Ilya Repin, Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky, Pavel Chistyakov, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Isaac Levitan, Andrei Ryabushkin, Nicholas Roerich and Valentin Serov.

In 2004, during celebration of the 120th anniversary of the Akademicheskaya Dacha, a plaque in memory of Vasily Kokorev was open at the main pavilion building.