Kolomyagi: A Village Inside Saint Petersburg — Wooden Church, Manor Park, Artists' Village and the Children's Railway

Kolomyagi is a historic district in the north of Saint Petersburg where, a kilometre from Udelnaya metro, the city suddenly turns into a village: private wooden houses, narrow lanes without pavements, a sky-blue timber church and a count's manor with a pond. Thirty minutes from the centre, and it feels like the dacha suburb it was a century ago. Here is what to see, how the children's railway works, and how to behave in a place where people simply live.

Why there is a village inside the city

Kolomyagi has been known since the early 18th century. In the 19th century the estate passed to General Nikitin and then to his daughter, who married Count Orlov-Denisov — hence the Nikitinskaya streets and the manor. By the end of the century it was a dacha resort with a hundred-odd houses, several times more residents in summer than in winter, amateur theatre and the area's first football club. The settlement became part of Leningrad in 1930, but the tower blocks passed it by, and today it is an officially recognised historic area of the Primorsky district with its own municipality and low-rise streets intact.

A two- to three-hour walk

Church of St Demetrius of Thessaloniki (1-ya Nikitinskaya Street, 1). A wooden church built in 1905–1906 to a design by Alexander Vseslavin, the architect of the Chapel of St Xenia at Smolensky Cemetery. The village raised the money itself; Count Orlov-Denisov gave the land and a large donation. It is a working parish with daily services, so photograph the blue walls and white fretwork from outside and be discreet if you step in.

The Orlov-Denisov manor and the Count's Pond (Glavnaya Street, 32). The manor house of 1839–1841 in late classicism is attributed to architect Alexei Gornostaev; together with its park and ponds it is a federally listed heritage ensemble. After 1917 it served as warehouses, a club, a cinema, a hostel and a boarding school; in 2011 it was sold to a private company that never restored it, and in 2020, according to the city heritage committee, it passed to a new owner with a plan for a public space with a restaurant, a tea house and an ice rink. Restoration started in 2021 and no completion date has been announced — the house stands behind fencing. The park, however, was rebuilt by the city and reopened on 5 September 2019: the pond, the dam and the footbridge are free to walk and the best place in Kolomyagi to sit by the water.

The Artists' Village. In the late 1980s sculptors and painters — Dmitry Kaminker, Viktor Danilov, Leonid Kolibaba and others — moved into old wooden houses in Ozerki, Shuvalovo and Kolomyagi; the association was formally registered in 1991. The studios and their sculpture gardens are on and around Ryabinovaya Street, but they are private homes: you get inside during festivals and open days announced by the association itself. From the street you can see sculptures over the fences, which is enough to understand the name.

Chapel of St Elizabeth of Thuringia (Ryabinovaya Street, 18). A Catholic chapel at the house of Monsignor Hartmut Kania and the Caritas charity centre, built in 1996–1997 by architects Arsenyev and Shpiryonok. A small building whose windows form one huge cross — the unexpected stop on the route. Directories list Sunday Mass; check with the parish.

The children's railway

The Malaya Oktyabrskaya Children's Railway opened on 27 August 1948. It has two lines, and the northern one runs here: from Ozyornaya station by the Ozerki suburban platform and Ozerki metro (Eliseyevskaya Street, 20, building 1) to Yuny station on Verbnaya Street in Kolomyagi. Two kilometres of track, eight minutes in the carriage, diesel locomotives — and the conductors, station attendants and assistant drivers are schoolchildren: it is a training railway where kids learn railway trades.

The key fact: the northern line runs only in summer, June to August, Thursday to Sunday, with the first train from Ozyornaya at 10:00 and then roughly every fifty minutes. The 2026 season on this line is over; the next opens in June 2027. The southern line, Kupchino — Pushkin, runs until the end of September, with the last weekend of 2026 on 26–27 September. Tickets are sold at the stations; prices and the current timetable are on the railway's website, and trains are cancelled in heat above 28 °C, storms or heavy rain.

Getting there, food and manners

The nearest metro is Udelnaya: about a kilometre, fifteen minutes on foot through Udelny Park or along the streets, to the church; from Pionerskaya it is a kilometre and a half. Ryabinovaya Street is two kilometres from Udelnaya, and a bus along Kolomyazhsky Prospekt shortens it — check a navigation app for the route number. There is nowhere to park: the lanes are narrow and the spaces by the houses are for residents. Kolomyagi has almost no cafés and no public toilets at all, so eat and stop near the metro before or after the walk. If you plan to stay in the north of the city, accommodation around Udelny Park and Komendantsky Prospekt is noticeably cheaper than the centre, and a transfer will take you to any point of the route without changes.

Kolomyagi is not a museum. Under every video about the district locals ask the same thing: do not turn it into another crowded Vyborg. So: do not look into windows or over fences, do not step onto private plots for a photo, keep quiet in the evening, do not park at gates, and keep dogs on a lead — the yard dogs behind the fences react to everything. That way the village inside the city stays a village.

Frequently asked questions