Former City Manor of Count Orlov - architectural monument (Moscow)

 Moscow State University (MSU), mansion / manor house / villa, Classicism, publishing house, listed building / architectural heritage, 1790s construction

In the 17th century this was the site of the Khitrov chambers.

In old Moscow only two churches were consecrated in the name of the sacred Nine Martyrs Kizichesky. One of them was located in this manor house. It is known that in 1765 Princess A. D. Trubetsky had obtained the permit to have a house church. It was built quickly and consecrated in the name of Saint Memnona and Nine Martyrs Kizichesky in connection with plague epidemic which have happened in 1771.

From Princess Trubetsky the house passed to Count V.G. Orlov and later to the princes Meshchersky who were its last owners beginning in 1859.

The building was constructed by the young Orlovs under the project of the famous Russian architect Matvei Kazakov. The three-story private residence was erected in style of the Moscow classicism. The house has a symmetrically designed facade with a portico with four Corinthian pilasters in the middle. In an attic located behind the portico, there was a spacious columned hall in which the house church was located. Between the pilasters at level of the third floor there are interesting relief panels with themes of ancient stories, probably, executed in the workshop of the well-known Italian sculptor, S. P. Kampioni, an interior decorator who worked in the first half of the 19th century in Moscow. The building interiors have kept elements of the furnishings from the different periods of construction of the house.

In 1812 the house and church burned down, but they were quickly restored, and a new temple was consecrated after the repairs were completed in 1814. After the October revolution, the Bolsheviks destroyed all the house churches in Moscow including this one in 1921.

In this building beginning in spring 1934 the history faculty of the Moscow State University was located. After the History Department transferred to the Sparrow Hills campus, the building became the side of the Moscow State University publishing house.