Kuskovo was conceived less as a home than as a stage. Created by the Sheremetevs, among the wealthiest noble families of 18th-century Russia, it was designed for receptions, theatre and open-air festivity, and its layout still reads that way: a palace facing the pond, an axial French garden with clipped hedges and statuary, and a scattering of pavilions in the fashionable manners of the day, from a Dutch house to an Italian pavilion, a grotto encrusted with shell work and a large orangery. Absorbed by the growth of Moscow, the estate survives as a museum with important decorative-arts and ceramics collections. Filmed in 4K, the programme follows the garden axis, enters the state rooms and the grotto, and restores the aristocratic art of living for which the ensemble was built.
