Tsaritsyno is one of the strangest projects of 18th-century Russia. Catherine the Great entrusted the design of a suburban residence south of Moscow to Vasily Bazhenov, who produced an ensemble unlike anything before it: red brick laced with white stone tracery, pointed openings and pinnacles, a Gothic-revival vocabulary mixed with Russian motifs and spread across pavilions, gates and bridges in a landscape park. The empress rejected the main palace; Matvei Kazakov was set to rebuild it, and the work was never completed. For two centuries Tsaritsyno stood as a romantic ruin before a major restoration in the 2000s gave the estate back its roofs and interiors. Filmed in 4K, the programme follows the park, the bridges and the palace, and tells the story of a caprice that outlived its author.
