A memorial marker at Yasnaya Polyana on the site of the house laid down by Prince Volkonsky, in which his grandson, Leo Tolstoy, would be born

A memorial marker at Yasnaya Polyana on the site of the house laid down by Prince Volkonsky, in which his grandson, Leo Tolstoy, would be born. Like the rebuilt estate of Bald Hills in «War and Peace», the house was built after the prince's death, and somewhat more modestly than originally planned, though it still had 42 rooms. The house was sold in the young years of Lev Nikolayevich, when he wrote from the Caucasus to his steward asking him to send money: he had lost at cards. A little to the left a wing from those times has survived; later it housed the Bers-Kuzminsky family, Sofya Andreyevna's sister Tatyana and her husband. To the right stands another wing, which, after several alterations, became Tolstoy's present-day house at Yasnaya Polyana