Fountain of Love (Kazan)

The Fountain of Love is a cast-iron fountain with two cupids in Lenin Garden, in the Vakhitovsky district of Kazan, off Dzerzhinsky Street in the historic centre of the capital of Tatarstan. Opened in 1894, it is considered the oldest surviving fountain in the city, and since 2018 it has been listed as an identified regional cultural heritage site.

History

Lenin Garden was laid out in 1891 on the site of Nikolaevskaya Square and was first known as Nikolaevsky Square garden. It held reservoirs of the city water supply, and in the late 19th century it was fenced off, with paid admission. The name Lenin Garden stuck after 1924, when the first monument to Vladimir Lenin in Kazan was put up here.

The fountain was the idea of the Kazan mayor Sergei Dyachenko, who suggested that Pyotr Gubonin, a first-guild merchant and patron, give the city a gift. It was built with money from Gubonin and the Kazan Water Supply Society at a cost of about 3,000 roubles, and opened on 21 August 1894.

Neither the designer nor the foundry is known. One theory is that Gubonin picked the fountain from the catalogue of the St Petersburg firm F. San-Galli, which produced standard garden castings; this would also explain its likeness to a fountain in the Sochi Arboretum.

The fountain broke down in 1931 and worked again from 1935, after the garden was handed over to the House of the Red Army. The garden was renovated in 2003–2005 with its historic layout preserved, and in 2013 the fountain was restored and painted gold. Since 2018, construction and earthworks around it have been prohibited.

What to see

The Fountain of Love is a tiered composition in the classical style. A bowl with an amphora-shaped jug stands in the middle of a round basin, water pouring from the jug, while two cast-iron cupids reach towards it among the jets. The original gilding wore away over time; the golden colour came back with the 2013 restoration.

The same garden has monuments to Alexander Pushkin and to the chemist Alexander Butlerov (1978), and since 2004 a memorial to the victims of political repression.

Legends and traditions

In Kazan the fountain with cupids is known as a place for dates and romantic walks. By tradition, newlyweds come here and toss coins into the bowl for luck.

Getting there

Lenin Garden is within walking distance of the main streets of central Kazan; the nearest major transport hub is Ploshchad Tukaya, with a metro station and bus and trolleybus stops. The garden is open to all, and the fountain runs in the warm season.