[citation needed] The German attack starting the Battle of Moscow (code-named ‘Operation Typhoon’) began on October 2 1941.

The attack on a broad front brought German forces to occupy the village of Krasnaya Polyana (now in the town of Lobnya) to Moscow's North West.

One story of events asserts a skirmish took place in Khimki on October 16 at the Leningradskoye Shosse bridge involving a German motorcycle unit.

[4] The environs are rich in architectural monuments, such as the Neo-Gothic estate of Marfino located 9 kilometers (5.6 mi) to the northeast, which was laid out by Field Marshal Pyotr Saltykov in the 1770s but was extensively modernized by Count Panin in 1837–1839.

The palace is Gothic in style, scored to resemble a medieval castle; a flight of stairs connects it with a white-stone wharf by the river, decorated with statues of griffins.

Within two kilometers from Marfino is the manor of Nikolskoye-Prozorovskoye, which contains a Neo-Baroque country house of Field Marshal Prozorovsky and a Neoclassical church of St. Nicholas, built in the 1790s.