Gorky Park

Gorky Park (Parizhskiy Park Gorkogo) is Moscow's best-known city park, officially the Central Park of Culture and Leisure named after Maxim Gorky. It covers about 120 hectares in the Yakimanka District of the Central Administrative Okrug, on Krymsky Val street next to the Park Kultury metro station, a couple of kilometers from the Kremlin. Its grounds include the former gardens of the Golitsyn Hospital and the Neskuchny Palace.

History

At the start of the 20th century the land where the park begins was a wasteland and a dump. In 1923 it hosted the First All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Industrial Exhibition, the largest in the country at the time. On 15 March 1928, by order of the Presidium of the Moscow Soviet, the exhibition grounds were turned into the Central Park of Culture and Leisure under a plan by architect Konstantin Melnikov, and in 1932 the park was named after Maxim Gorky.

The fountains and several buildings were damaged during the Great Patriotic War and rebuilt afterward. A ceremonial entrance arch in Stalinist Empire style was added in the 1950s. In 2011 the park underwent a major overhaul: its new head, Sergei Kapkov, had about a hundred old rides and unauthorized structures removed, and the cleared areas were paved. In August 2018 the park marked its 90th anniversary. In early 2025 the historic park administration building was demolished - a former workshop of the Krymsky Bromley shipyard (1893-1895, architect Sergei Sherwood) rebuilt in 1930-1932 by Lazar Lissitzky and Lyubov Zalesskaya in a Postconstructivist style; a new public space with access to the Krymskaya Embankment is planned on the site.

Fountains

A complex of fountains from the 1930s has survived in the park. The central Figurny ("Figured") Fountain originally featured the sculpture "Girl with an Oar", which was removed on Stalin's orders; after a 1955 reconstruction the fountain took its current place at the center of the park. Ahead of the 1980 Olympics it received a lighting system designed by the German firm Siemens, and in 2018 the incandescent lamps were replaced with floodlights carrying 420 LEDs, along with a 16-speaker sound system.

The Rosarium Fountain near the exit to Leninsky Prospekt was destroyed during the war and rebuilt in 1948; during its 2011 restoration, workers found historical items from the 1930s in the drainage system, including a ring and light bulbs. The cascade fountain "Bather" on the Pushkinskaya Embankment was built in 1937 to a design by architect Alexander Vlasov, with the sculpture of a female athlete added in 1952.

What else to see

The Mekhanizatsiya ("Mechanization") Pavilion still stands on Krymsky Val - the only surviving structure out of 255 built for the 1923 exhibition; architect Ivan Zholtovsky had conceived the rest as temporary buildings. In the 1950s one of its sections was converted into a dance floor, later featured in the film "I Am Walking Around Moscow".

The Stalin Automobile Plant Stadium, once located in the park, hosted the factory team SKZ, the Jewish sports club Maccabi and Torpedo starting in 1918. In 2008 the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture was founded in the park by Dasha Zhukova and Roman Abramovich: it first operated out of a temporary pavilion designed by architect Shigeru Ban, then in 2015 moved into the reconstructed former Vremena Goda restaurant building redesigned by Rem Koolhaas. For many years the park's winter skating rink hosted a figure-skating school run by Alexei Yagudin.

Getting there

Gorky Park's address is Krymsky Val; the main entrance stands right by the Park Kultury metro station, a few minutes' walk from the platform to the park's arch. Other entrances lead in from Yakimanka and the Neskuchny Garden, through the 1950s entrance arch built in Stalinist Empire style.