Yasnaya Polyana means clear glade, and the glade is where Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828, lived most of his life and wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The estate lies a few kilometres south of Tula, in the open, rolling farmland of central Russia, and it is one of the most visited literary sites in the country. The house is plain, white and wooden-floored, full of books, and it feels like a place where a family really lived, with a large dining table, a piano and a study that still has the writer's desk.
Around the house stretch the grounds that Tolstoy loved: orchards, an avenue of birches, ponds, and woods where he walked and rode every day. He ran a school for peasant children here, farmed, and in later life gave up much of his wealth and his title. When he died in 1910, at a railway station far from home, he was brought back and buried in the forest, in a simple grassy mound with no cross, no name and no marker. It is one of the most affecting graves in the world, reached by a path through the trees, and visitors walk to it in silence. During the German occupation of the region in 1941, the house was damaged and the contents had been evacuated, but the estate was later restored.
The area around Tula has a long history of its own. The city was a centre of arms production from the days of Peter the Great, and also gave Russia its best-known samovars and spiced gingerbread, which are still sold in the old streets. The roads around the estate are a mixture of main highways, which carry a lot of freight on the way between Moscow and the south, and quiet lanes through fields and villages. The surface varies, and you should watch for potholes and for tractors.
Fuel is easy to find in the towns nearby, including Kosaya Gora and Tula itself, which has all services. The estate has a cafe and a shop, and it is best to arrive early, because tour buses fill the car park by late morning. Set aside at least two hours to walk the grounds. Late spring, with the apple blossom out, and early autumn, with the birches turning, are the best times, and the estate is quiet in winter, when snow lies deep on the paths.