Zaryadye Park

Zaryadye Park is an urban park in the very centre of Moscow, on the bank of the Moskva River, a few minutes' walk from the Kremlin and Red Square. It covers about 13 hectares in the historic Zaryadye district, on the site of the demolished Rossiya Hotel, and opened on September 9, 2017, for Moscow's 870th anniversary.

History

Zaryadye is one of the oldest districts of Moscow: its name comes from its position "behind the rows" of trading stalls on Red Square. Craftsmen and merchants settled here in the Middle Ages, and archaeological digs have turned up household items from pre-Mongol times. The Znamensky Monastery was founded on land owned by the Romanov boyars, giving the district its name; the monastery is one of the few surviving monuments of old Zaryadye.

In 1967 the Rossiya Hotel was built on the site of the dismantled medieval buildings — the largest hotel in the world by floor area at the time of its opening, with a 2,500-seat concert hall and its own cinema. The hotel was demolished in 2006, and the site was fully cleared by 2015. In 2012 an international architectural competition for the redevelopment of the site was won by a consortium led by the New York studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro together with the Moscow urban planners Citymakers; the embankment and the bridge were designed by the Moscow studio TPO Reserve, runner-up in the competition. Construction cost more than 480 million dollars and was funded from the Moscow city budget.

Landscape zones and sights

The park is divided into four landscape zones that recreate the natural zones of Russia: tundra with mosses and lichens, steppe, mixed forest and a marshy floodplain. The zones sit at different levels, linked by pedestrian terraces and covered galleries.

The park's main landmark is the Floating Bridge, a V-shaped concrete cantilever 70 metres long that hangs over the Moskva River with no intermediate supports. It offers views of the Kremlin and Saint Basil's Cathedral.

The Zaryadye concert hall opened in 2018. Its Great Amphitheatre seats up to 1,500 people and has an organ with 85 stops, while the Small Amphitheatre holds 400. Beneath the park is a media centre of about 8,500 square metres with the "Flight" cinema hall, exhibition spaces and an ice cave kept at −2 to −12°C, which took about 70 tonnes of water to build.

Getting there

The park can be reached on foot from the Kitay-Gorod, Okhotny Ryad, Teatralnaya and Ploshchad Revolyutsii metro stations. From Kitay-Gorod it takes about 8 minutes along Varvarka Street or Kitaygorodsky Proezd.