Museum-estate of Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev in the village of Boblovo

The Boblovo Estate Museum is located in the village of Boblovo of the same name, Voroninsky rural settlement, Klinsky district, Moscow region. Now the estate, together with the Shakhmatovo and Tarakanovo estates located in neighboring villages, is part of the Memorial Museum-Reserve of D. I. Mendeleev and A. A. Blok.

How to get to Bablovo

To get to the estate by car, you need to leave Moscow along the Leningradskoye Shosse or along the M11 toll highway and get to Solnechnogorsk. Here you need to turn at the 6th traffic light onto Tarakanovskoye Highway and move to the village of Popelkovo, then you need to turn right onto the secondary road leading to Boblovo.

The estate can be reached by train. To do this, you need to take the train at the Leningradsky station, going along one of the routes in the Tverskoy direction:

Moscow - Klin;
Moscow - Konakovo State District Power Plant;
Moscow - Tver.

Several dozen trains depart to Klin every day, starting at 04:33 and ending at 23:42. Travel time is from 58 minutes to 2 hours 5 minutes. Cost - 300 RUR (Lastochka class), 220 RUR (regular electric trains). An alternative option to get to Klin is to take a bus on the Moscow - Klin - Konakovo route, departing from the Tushinskaya metro station. In total, 4 buses depart to Klin daily, the service starts at 08:32, the last bus leaves at 20:32. Travel time is 1 hour 32 minutes, cost is 156 RUR.

Upon arrival in Klin, at the local bus station you need to take bus No. 42 Klin - Boblovo - Klin. A total of 5 flights depart daily on the route, the first departs at 04:37, the last at 15:15. Travel time is 50 minutes. The first return flight departs at 07:24, ending at 16:20.

History of the estate

The territory of the estate in the 17th-19th centuries belonged to the nobles Molozheninov, after which it changed several owners. For a long time it was owned by a representative of the Georgian princely family E. A. Dadiani (in the Russian tradition - Dadianov). In 1865, a young professor at St. Petersburg University, Dmitry Mendeleev, purchased the estate in half with his colleague Nikolai Ilyin. The purchase price was 8,000 rubles, and Mendeleev later admitted that he would not have sold the estate for 80,000.

Every year from the moment of purchase until his death, Mendeleev spent the summer months here. For a comfortable life, the scientist himself developed a new estate project using the latest technology. Under his leadership, a stone residential building with a laboratory was erected in 1869. Professor Ilyin chose a stone house built at the beginning of the 19th century by the former owners. Later, he ceded the second part of the estate and his house to Mendeleev’s relative, Professor Ya. Smirnov.

The estate's arable land was completely turned into an experimental field for experiments with mineral fertilizers. Mendeleev's successes in this field were so great that outstanding agronomists of his time came here to gain experience. Other famous visitors to the estate were A. Kuindzhi, I. Shishkin, I. Kramskoy, I. Repin and other Itinerant artists.

Due to a divorce from his ex-wife and marriage to Anna Popova, Mendeleev and his new wife left the estate for a while. The Mendeleev couple finally returned to the estate in 1889. Since by this time they already had three children, it was decided to build a new residential building on the estate. A garden with exotic plants was built next to the house. Over the years, the estate grew - the scientist's relatives settled here. Professor A. N. Beketov lived in the neighboring Shakhmatovo estate, located 7 km from Boblovo. His grandson, the future poet A. Blok, often visited Boblovo and took part in local theatrical performances in a specially built barn theater. It was then that Blok met Mendeleev’s daughter from his second marriage, Lyuba, who later became his wife. The newlyweds lived in Boblovo every summer until Mendeleev’s death.

What is inside

Unfortunately, time has not been kind to most of the estate's buildings. After the revolution of 1917, Mendeleev’s first house was transferred to the department of the Sogolevsky village council and was dismantled; a year later, the scientist’s second house and the barn-theater burned down in a fire. Of the main buildings of the estate, only the Ilyin-Smirnov house has survived, which by that time had been turned into a school. The garden designed by artists Kuindzhi and Yaroshenko also remained untouched. Since 1984, the estate has been turned into a museum-reserve dedicated to the life of the scientist and his activities. In recent years, there has been talk about restoring the scientist’s residential buildings, but so far no concrete actions have been taken in this direction.

Mendeleev Museum

Despite the modest size of the museum, its exhibitions are quite rich - in total, 284 objects related to the life of the scientist are stored and exhibited in the museum's collections. Both exhibitions of the Mendeleev Museum are open in the Ilyin-Smirnov house - the only one preserved on the territory of the estate.

The first exhibition is called “Mendeleevskoye Boblovo” and is dedicated to the life of the scientist in the estate, his activities on the basis of science; personal items of the scientist and photographs are exhibited here. The history of Mendeleev’s first and second marriage is also presented in detail, the life of his children is briefly described and in detail about the acquaintance and marriage of Lyubov Mendeleeva and Alexander Blok.

The second exhibition is called “Family Treasures Return”, here you can examine preserved household tools, but the main highlight of the hall is models of the destroyed buildings in which Mendeleev lived with his family, as well as a model of the estate’s territory.