The Sima village situated on the bank of the Simka river is among the oldest villages of the Yuriev-Polsky area. It was first mentioned in the 14th century cadastres.

In the 16th century, the village became the Tsar's home territory and was owned by Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible who bequeathed it to his wife Anna. Up to 1708, the rich trade village of Sima was known to be the Palace's estate. Then, Emperor Peter the Great conferred it together with the surrounding settlements on one of his best war chiefs, Field Marshall General Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich Golitsyn to thank him for the victory in the Northern War of 1700–1721. Since then and till 1918, Sima was continuously owned by the Golitsyn family line who faithfully and loyally served Russia over several centuries pursuing military, civil, and public activities.

In the second half of the 18th century, a large-scale construction project started in Sima. In 1769, a new church of stone was erected in the place and instead of the old wooden Church of the Epiphany. In 1775, a warm church made of stone was built in tribute to Dmitry of Thessaloniki. Concurrently, a beautiful two-storey manor house was constructed, with a mezzanine in the centre and the side wings to accommodate the estate's household staff. Behind the house there was a large formal linden park with a traditional layout in form of two eight-pointed stars inscribed in squares.

The Princes Golitsyn manor was a remarkable piece of architecture and park-and-garden art of the age of classicism and one of the most important cultural centers of the Vladimir governorate of the 18th and 19th centuries.
One special chapter of the history of the Golitsyns' estate in Sima is connected with the repeated visits paid by Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration (1765−1812), an outstanding Russian war chief. The news of Napoleon's invasion of Russia reached P.I.  
Bagration in Sima where he was on a visit to thе Golitsyn family. Along with the news of the war Bagration received from Emperor Alexander the First an order appointing him to the position of the commander-in-chief of the Second Western Army which later bore the brunt of one of the strongest French attacks in the Battle of Borodino on 26 August 1812. Prince P.I. Bagration injured in the Borodino Battle was transported to the Golitsyns' estate where he died and was buried. In 1839, on the occasion of the ceremonial opening of the monument to the fallen heroes in the Borodino field, the war chief's ashes were solemnly transferred, according to the will of Emperor Nikolas the First, from the Sima estate to the place of the heroic battle.

The mansion house of the Golitsyn family with the park, which is listed as a cultural heritage site of national importance, have survived to this day, as well as two wings of the estate and the Dmitry of Thessaloniki Church which are considered cultural heritage sites of local importance.