Wonderful gardens, tsar’s residence and Moscow salon: how capital’s parks have changed over the years

With lectures, excursions, master classes and even open-air film screenings held, Moscow parks have long been a hot spot for residents. This year, 14 capital’s parks will celebrate their anniversaries-many of them will be over 50 years old. We tell you what recreation area was improved by Sergei Tretyakov, where footballer Alexei Khomich started his career, and what park Peter the Great founded.

This year is special for Tagansky Park, located on Taganskaya Street (bldg. 40–42), as it is turning 90 years old. Founded in 1934 at the N. Bukharin workers’ club, it immediately became the cultural center in the Tagansky area. In 1957, the Zenit movie theater was built on the site of the old club housing a cinema and a concert hall and offering art clubs for children and adults.

The history of Tagansky Park is associated with the names of outstanding Moscow residents. For instance, football players Konstantin Beskov and Alexei Khomich, USSR tennis champion Nikolay Ozerov and Olympic figure skating champion Irina Rodnina started their sports careers there.

After the Great Patriotic War, the park hosted meetings with heroes of the Soviet Union, military and patriotic gatherings, competitions and gala concerts. It also organized performances by jazz and brass bands and dance evenings. The park hosted major festivals such as the Musical Bazaar on Taganka, Beauty Will Save the World, Moscow Yard, Spring in Tagansky Park, Taganka Running Festival and many others. Sports clubs from different Moscow areas took part in the competitions at the stadium.

In the early 2000s, the park was popular with children and teenagers. For example, a creativity center with a chamber hall was opened to hold musical performances and festivals. Today, the park continues to host concerts, master classes and sports competitions. In the summer, guests can practice yoga, bachata and Zumba, and in the winter, the stadium, which turns into a skating rink, hosts ice discos.

Tagansky Park delights visitors with a variety of plants, for example, poplars, chestnuts, lindens, maples, ashes, apple trees, a three-hundred-year-old English oak and tulips and lilacs blooming in the spring. While walking through the park, visitors can see starlings, thrushes, tits, wagtails and squirrels.

Tagansky Park boasts a large fountain, an open-air stage, a rope park, children’s and sports grounds, a stadium with a football field, stands and running tracks, a creativity center, a physical education and health complex, a martial arts center as well as a Museum of Tricks and Illusions.

In 2012–2013, the park was fully reconstructed; the stadium got a makeover with new sports grounds and recreation facilities opened.

Tagansky Park includes Pryamikov Children’s Park (15a/1 Taganskaya Street), one of the first recreation areas in the city dating back to 1775. The park is named after the hero of the October Revolution. In 2017, it got a new landscape, hardscape and the latest equipment.

Tagansky Park is now a culture, leisure and sports center, a spot for recreation activities and leisurely strolls. It follows its traditions and opens even more clubs for the younger generation.

First pleasure garden

Erected 130 years ago, the Hermitage Garden was the first pleasure garden in Moscow with gazebos, flowerbeds, a theater, a stage, coffee houses and pavilions. From 1830 until the end of the 19 th century, it was located on Staraya Bozhedomka Street (currently Durova Street). The garden was in its prime when it belonged to the entrepreneur and former actor of the Maly Theatre, Mikhail Lentovsky. However, after his ruin, the garden fell into disrepair and its entire area was built up. In 1894, it started a new life but in a different location. In just one year, the plot of land on Karetny Ryad, which was owned by the Moscow merchant Yakov Shchukin, was transformed from a wasteland into a blooming garden. It got flowerbeds and paths, trees and bushes and a reconstructed theater building as well as electric lighting, running water and a swimming pool.

A year later, in 1896, one of the first film screenings in Russia took place in the garden-residents were able to see the invention of the Lumiere brothers. Another big event was the performance given by the famous American illusionist Harry Houdini.

Feodor Chaliapin, Leonid Sobinov and Antonina Nezhdanova sang on the Hermitage stage, and it was there that Sergei Rachmaninoff made his debut as a conductor. In 1898, the Moscow Art Theater opened in the building of the Hermitage Theater, where the play Tsar Feodor Ioannovich was staged. Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Lenin often visited the garden.

After 1917, the garden was nationalized, and then it was rented out. In 1924, the theater building was occupied by the Theater of Moscow City Council of Trade Unions (known as MGSPS Theater), which was later renamed the Mossovet Theater.

The Hermitage Garden survived the Great Patriotic War and was reconstructed in the summer of 1945. Three years later, they built an outdoor concert hall there, which hosted Arkady Raikin, Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Lyudmila Ruslanova and the Leonid Utesov Orchestra. The Hermitage was a venue where Vladimir Vysotsky used to perform and the first What? Where? When? game took place.

Today, the Hermitage Garden is a protected garden art monument. Revamped and landscaped on a regular basis, the garden is a venue to host concerts, performances and festivals.

Famous Moscow salon

The history of the Vorontsovo estate, which already spans five centuries, is also very curious. The estate was first mentioned in the will of the Moscow prince Ivan III. The estate passed into the possession of the Repnin princes in 1640. However, all the buildings that have survived to this day were constructed at the turn of the 18 th-19 th centuries under Field Marshal Nikolai Repnin. At that time, the northern and southern wings, the greenhouse, the stable yard, the main entrance complex and the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity were built.

During the 1812 Patriotic War, a hot air balloon was developed at the estate under the guidance of the German mechanic Franz Leppich. This episode is described in Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace. In the 1820s, the Vorontsovo estate was owned by Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya. All the celebrities of that time visited her Moscow salon; for example, the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz.

After 1918, it was home to members of European socialist parties Emile Vandervelde, Arthur Waters, Theodor Liebknecht and Kurt Rosenfeld. After the evacuation of the All-Union Scientific Research Vitamin Institute from Leningrad in late 1942, the estate opened the Vorontsov Central Biological Station and three two-story buildings in the 1950s.

The Vorontsovo estate is a garden art monument covering an area of 40.7 hectares with a cascade of ponds, an oak grove, Italian and Chinese gardens. The park has playgrounds, rides, outdoor cafes and skating rinks. The estate often hosts city festivals and games, flash mobs and exhibitions as well as sports events and excursions.

Tsar’s residence in the south of Moscow

Another historical park in Moscow is the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve. First mentioned in the charters of Prince Ivan Kalita, Kolomenskoye turned into a famous grand ducal, royal and imperial residence.

The place is associated with the members of the royal dynasties of Rurikovich and Romanov: Dmitry Donskoy, Ivan III, Vasily III, Ivan the Terrible, Alexey Mikhailovich, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and many others. It was an ideal place to celebrate the victories in the Battles of Kulikovo and Poltava.

Today, the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve is a unique historical and cultural area boasting medieval landscapes and natural monuments. The construction was initiated by the cultural figure Pyotr Baranovsky in 1923.

From falconry to concerts by Feodor Chaliapin

Sokolniki Park was another favorite place for Muscovites to take a stroll in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. In the 17 th century, during the reign of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, it was a popular falconry spot, hence the name of the park. It used to bring together all secular society, including princes, emperors and empresses.

Legend has it that in the late 17 th century, by order of Peter the Great, the first opening appeared in a grove, which still exists. In 1845–1848, it got a city park and new cascades of ponds in place of the old reservoirs. In 1866, the recreation area became the part of Moscow and in 1879, it was brought under municipal ownership. The mayor, Sergei Tretyakov, the brother of the founder of the Tretyakov Gallery, invested his own assets in the improvement of the park’s area to ensure that it became part of Moscow.

Its openwork pavilion-rotunda used to host classical music concerts given by Feodor Chaliapin and Leonid Sobinov, film screenings and children’s parties. In 1919, Vladimir Lenin initiated a children’s New Year show in the park for the students of the country boarding school.

In 1931, the Moscow City Council declared Sokolniki a city park of culture and leisure. After the Great Patriotic War, the recreation area, covering more than 500 hectares, was reconstructed. In 1973, the legendary Sokolniki Sports Palace was built. In 1979, the park was recognized as a cultural heritage site and a garden art monument of regional significance.

Wonderful gardens and menagerie

The history of Izmailovsky Park goes back to the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich. In the 17 th century, it was home to a royal estate with wonderful Italian-style gardens and decorative towers with galleries, which complemented the landscape. Three kilometers from the sovereign’s court, the Prosyansky Garden was built. The wood (now Izmailovsky Park) used to house one of the largest menageries in Europe, which served for the amusement of the royal family. Lions, tigers, leopards, monkeys and rare birds could be found there, as well as a fish farm.

The Izmailovsky Park of Culture and Leisure was opened in 1931. Until 1961 it was named after Joseph Stalin. It features the oldest Ferris wheel in the city, the open-air military equipment museum called Courage Square, 17 th century Krugly (Round) Pond and a music gazebo.