Averkiy Kirillov Palace

Averkiy Kirillov’s Palace in Moscow, Russia, is a riverside noble residence erected in the mid-17th century by members of the Muscovite Russian elite, with visible alterations dating to the early 18th century that reflect tastes of the Peter the Great era. The ensemble on Bersenevka grew from a property tied to a prominent family and later served civic and scholarly functions, giving it long-standing cultural and administrative importance in the city.

The land originally belonged to the Beklemishev (Bersen-) family. After the 1525 execution of Ivan Bersen-Beklemishev, an event connected with the controversy known as the case of Maximus the Greek, the plot reverted to the crown and was subsequently granted to a man named Kirill, who founded the Kirillov line that later developed the site.

The surviving main buildings date to the years 1656–1657, when Averkiy Kirillov, a duma clerk, assembled the present ensemble. A stone inscription in the cellars records the year 1657, and the living chambers along with a covered corridor linking the residence to the nearby Church of St. Nicholas on Bersenevka were built in the 1650s. The church itself was constructed in the same decade, together forming a small noble complex on the embankment.

In the opening decades of the 18th century a new owner, A. F. Kurbatov, a clerk attached to the Armory Chamber, undertook substantial rebuilding and additions between about 1701 and 1711 (dates are sometimes given as 1703–1711). Work from this period added a symmetrical side wing and a prominent three-storey central projection whose ornament and proportions reflect architectural fashions that accompanied the shift of the Russian capital to St. Petersburg and changing elite preferences.

In the second half of the 1860s an architect altered the chambers to accommodate the Moscow Archaeological Society, which used the building from 1868 until 1923. From 1941 the premises were occupied by the Russian Institute of Culturology, with institutional presence continuing through 2014. During restoration work in February 2026 a hoard of roughly 20,000 silver coins dated to the 16th and 17th centuries was discovered within the structure. The property is protected as a federal architectural monument and forms part of the nation’s cultural heritage.