Friendship Park. Friendship park at the river station is one of the most beautiful places in the capital Festival flower what birds mean
The creation of the Friendship Park with an area of about 50 hectares was timed to coincide with the VI World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow. Until 1957, on the Leningradskoye Highway opposite the Northern River Station, there was a vacant lot with the remains of rural buildings on the site of the village of Aksinino, with a wood warehouse and railway branches to the asphalt concrete and Nikolsky brick factories.
After the end of the Second World War, a world conference of youth for peace was held in London, at which it was decided to hold international festivals under the slogan "For peace and friendship!" The program included political seminars and discussions, concerts, sports competitions, and the festivals opened with a colorful procession of participants. The Dove of Peace, drawn by Pablo Picasso, became the symbol of the youth forum.
The main youth forum of the planet came to the capital of the USSR after Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Berlin, Warsaw and in each of the cities that hosted the World Festival of Youth and Students, delegates planted trees in parks and squares. Moscow supported the festival tradition by greening the north-western outskirts of the city.
The park project was developed by a team of young architects, recent graduates of the Moscow Architectural Institute. For Valentin Ivanov, Galina Yezhova, Anatoly Savin, this was the first independent work carried out with the tactful participation of Vitaly Dolganov, who headed the design workshop for landscaping in Moscow. In particular, according to Dolganov's project, an observation deck was built on the Lenin Hills, and his merits were awarded the Order of Lenin. The master's professional advice was useful to young people, who were given complete freedom of action.
The creators of the park also collaborated with the architect Karo Alabyan, who at that time was developing the detailed layout of the new streets, which were named Festivalnaya and Flotskaya in 1964. On December 31 of the same year, the Rechnoy Vokzal metro station, built according to a standard design, was opened for passengers on the territory of the Friendship Park.
Friendship Park and Festivalnaya Street. 1965-1967: https://pastvu.com/p/22315
Well, in the spring of 1957, young architects pushed their project through the authorities. The architectural and planning solution differed from the neighboring park of the Northern River Station, located on a flat relief.
Ivanov, Yezhova and Savin defended the preservation of the picturesque landscape with hills and reservoirs. It was only in April that the executive committee of the Moscow Soviet approved the plan, and a team of gardeners of the Moszelenstroy trust began practical work with the support of hundreds of Komsomol members brought to the site by buses with shovels and rakes.
In the park of Friendship, paths and squares were laid out, benches were installed, bridges were thrown across the channels, 500 birches, lindens, maples, larches, chestnuts and conifers from nurseries were planted. Five fifty-year-old lindens symbolized five continents, and in the center stood an eighty-year-old oak from the Khimki forest park. The main decoration of the park is a flower bed - the emblem of the World Festival of Youth and Students - a chamomile with five multi-colored petals.
Let me remind you that at that time the environs of the River Station were a village mixed with an industrial zone and, in order to blur out the unsightly reality, the organizers painted blank fences with images of young people of different peoples walking towards the park with seedlings, watering cans and shovels in their hands. This was probably the first domestic graffiti, moreover, legal.
The park opening celebration took place on August 1, 1957, with a huge crowd of people. About a thousand trees were reserved for planting, but there were five times more people wishing to participate in landscaping. On the seedlings, the delegates left notes with their names and, after completing the honorary mission, were treated to wine and fruits, which were carried by young men and women in national costumes of the peoples of the republics of the USSR. But the performance of amateur performances did not take place due to the pouring rain, which forced the delegates of the festival to scatter on their buses.
Planting trees in the park. August 1, 1957: https://pastvu.com/p/13104
Soviet youth, who had just freed themselves from the Stalinist cap, for the first time got the opportunity to freely exchange opinions with guests from capitalist countries, hence the fashion for jeans, stylish hairstyles, rock and roll, and some Komsomol members could not resist even more informal communication with the envoys of others continents, which led to the emergence of the phraseological unit "children of the festival."
Another Moscow festival was held in 1985 at a high ideological level and did not become such an enchanting event. By the beginning of this festival, a landscape composition "Festival Flower" was opened in the Friendship Park. The tradition of holding youth forums has survived to this day, the XIX World Festival of Youth and Students is planned to be held in September-October 2017 in Sochi.
Well, all the planted trees have taken root and the Friendship Park is still a favorite walking place for local residents. In 1957, the Moscow pioneers solemnly promised to take care of the plantings, but with the abolition of the pioneer organization, this responsibility was transferred to the employees of public utilities.
The chamomile flower bed was destroyed in 1977, in its place was erected a monument to the Hungarian-Soviet friendship based on the idea of the Soviet sculptor Vuchetich and the Hungarian Storbl (sculptor B. Buza, architects I. Zilakhi, I. Fedorov). Since then, a lot of chaotically installed sculptures and memorial signs that have no direct relation to the youth festival movement have appeared on the territory of the Friendship Park.
The sculptural compositions "Bread" and "Fertility" were created according to the sketches of Vera Mukhina
Monument "Friendship" - the central part of the composition "Festival Flower"
Memorial sign to Nicaraguan revolutionary Carlos Fonseca Amador, who died in 1976
The feat of the Soviet Union Danish gratitude (1986)
Commemorative plaque of the monument to the memory of the soldiers who died in Afghanistan
Monument to the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1990)
Monument to the Spanish writer Cervantes (1981, copy of the sculpture by Antonio Sola in 1835). Vandals regularly take away the sword from Cervantes.
Monument to the Kyrgyz epic hero Manas the Magnanimous - a bronze figure of a hero (2012)
Sculptural composition
Peace tree
Alice Selezneva, the heroine of the television film "Guest from the Future" (2001)
Six Festival ponds are connected by channels through which bridges are thrown. After the festival, this part of the park remained wild and only by 1980 acquired its present form - with asphalt paths and concreted banks. The reason for the improvement was the holding of the XXII Olympic Games in Moscow, in which the Dynamo Sports Palace was involved on the Lavochkin Street adjacent to the park.
Quarries filled with water. 1957-1958: https://pastvu.com/p/13101
The improvement of the ponds is planned for 2016, for which the surrounding area is fenced, the passages through the footbridges are blocked. The list of planned works includes cleaning of silt and deepening of ponds, reconstruction of a spillway, installation of a feeding water supply system, repair of the coastline, arrangement of the adjacent territory.
Some quarries of the Nikolsky Brick Factory were flooded with water, while others were used as a sports ground for playing rugby and baseball. The park hosted competitions of model aircraft and tests of hunting dogs. Once the brick factory NKZ occupied a vast territory along the Leningradskoye highway and Konakovsky passage and worked on its own raw materials, extracting clay from quarries, which later became ponds. Clay was excavated all year round by dredging machines that moved along rails along the edge of the quarry. In the early 1980s, production began to curtail, building up the factory area with housing, and legally NKZ ceased to exist in 1998.
Nikolsky brick factory in the background. 1938: https://pastvu.com/p/2929
Notable buildings include the Dynamo Sports Palace on Lavochkina Street and the MATI student dormitory, which was built at the turn of the 1960s-1970s as the Intourist hotel, but something went wrong, the object was abandoned and only later an elevator shaft from monolithic reinforced concrete that balanced the main building.
Today we will go to the very north of the capital, to the area of the River Station and get acquainted with the sights of the Friendship Park and the park surrounding the River Station itself.
These parks represent a single forest park zone on the eastern bank of the Khimki reservoir, divided into two parts by the Leningradskoe highway
These parks represent a single forest park zone on the eastern bank of the Khimki reservoir, divided into two parts by the Leningradskoe highway.
Our walk starts from the Rechnoy Vokzal metro station of the Zamoskvoretskaya line. Coming out of the train carriage, we follow the signs and look for the "Exit to the River Station and the Friendship Park" we need.
Once on the surface, go forward a little and turn left. We follow the sidewalk past the small Inter-Service Shopping Center, and then along Festivalnaya Street to the Leningradskoye Highway.
Behind the cast-iron fence, past which we pass, there is the Friendship Park, we will go there in the second part of our walk, our first goal is the River Station and the surrounding park, located on the opposite side of Leningradka. This highway, which is busy at any time of the day, can only be crossed through an underground passage. The nearest of them is located on our left, about fifty meters from the intersection of Festivalnaya Street and Leningradskoye Highway.
Turn left, reach the transition and go to the opposite side. Coming out of the passage, we find ourselves at the central entrance to the River Station park. It is decorated with a sculpture of white stone - a woman holding a sailing ship in her hands raised above her head. This is "Waterway" by the sculptor Julia Kuhn.
On the right and left sides of the entrance, cast-iron anchors are installed on granite pedestals. The very fence of the park, the same age as the River Station, built in 1937, is also of architectural value.
We go into the park along the central alley. Ahead is the spire of the building of the Northern River Station.
The left side of the park is dedicated to children's attractions. Here in abundance - merry-go-rounds, inflatable trampolines, shooting galleries and other entertainments. Most of them are surrounded by tall trees, which is important on hot summer days, children will be protected from the scorching sun.
On one of the alleys there is a small fountain, which brings additional freshness to the atmosphere.
If you come for a walk without small children, then you can lower the left side of the park and head along the central alley straight to the River Station.
The alley ends with a car park for cars meeting and seeing off cruise boats.
Ticket offices are also located here, temporarily located in a separate pavilion, since the station building is closed for reconstruction.
So, we came to the main attraction of the park, the building of the Northern River Station. Sometimes it is called the Khimki railway station after the name of the reservoir where it is located.
The station was built simultaneously with the opening of the Moscow Canal, in 1937. We are informed about this by the inscription on the facade of the building.
There are also bas-reliefs on the "water" theme, the roof of the building is decorated with sculptures of Soviet citizens, traditional for the architecture of the 1930s (such sculptures adorn, for example, some of the famous Stalinist heights), a clock visible from afar is installed on the spire, and it is crowned a five-pointed star, of course.
Let's go around the station on the left side through a small gate in the fence. We find ourselves at the pier of the Khimki reservoir.
Cruise ships travel from the Khimki Reservoir through the Moscow Canal. Most of them follow east along the Volga. However, there are those who take tourists to the northwest: through the Rybinsk reservoir and the White Lake to Karelia, to the famous monument of wooden architecture Kizhi, Petrozavodsk and further, across Lake Ladoga, to St. Petersburg.
The variety of ships is impressive. Here you can see both small pleasure boats and massive three-four-deck liners.
View of the building of the North Station from the pier:
As we have already noted, the building is under restoration. However, even in this form, it looks worthy. When the renovation work is over, the River Station will undoubtedly return to the list of the most beautiful buildings in Moscow of the 20th century.
We will walk along the pier from the southern wing of the station to the northern one. Here, at the northern wing, there is a monument to the outstanding Russian shipbuilder academician Alexei Nikolaevich Krylov.
Once in the park, on the left hand side we will see the sculptural composition "Basketball players".
We move along a small asphalt alley towards the exit from the park. As already mentioned, the trees in the park are quite tall and grow quite close to each other, therefore, even on the sunniest day it is not hot here. And if it rains, the crowns of trees will cover passers-by. You can just walk in the park, enjoying the fresh air, or go rollerblading or cycling.
Returning to the main entrance, through the underground passage we go to the other side of the Leningradskoe highway. Our next goal is the Friendship Park.
One of the main entrances to the park is located right in front of us. However, in order not to get confused and not to miss a single attraction, we will first walk along Leningradka to the right (south). A sculpture of a horseman, well visible from Leningradka, will serve as a reference point for turning. Here we will turn into the green area of the park.
On closer inspection, the rider turns out to be a monument to Manas the Magnanimous, the hero of the Kyrgyz epic. This is a gift to the city of Moscow from the friendly republic of Kyrgyzstan. It was installed relatively recently, in 2012.
We will go down from the hill on which the monument is located, and proceed into the depths of the park, keeping a little to the right. Here, surrounded by neatly trimmed shrubs, we will see a red granite stone. The inscription on it reads:. Thus, next to a gift from the Kyrgyz people, another one should soon appear - from the Kazakh.
Returning to the Manas sculpture, follow the park alley running parallel to Leningradka.
Not even twenty meters away, we will see another sculpture. This is Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spanish writer, author of the immortal novel Don Quixote.
This monument is another gift to Moscow, this time from Spain, the homeland of Cervantes. Since this is already the third such attraction, it is worth stopping for a couple of minutes and taking a short excursion into the history of the creation of the Friendship Park.
The park was founded in 1957 during the VI World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow. The festival became a significant event in international relations, because not only socialist countries friendly to the Soviet Union took part in it, but also representatives of the “enemy” capitalist camp.
The festival fell in the midst of the so-called "Khrushchev thaw", Muscovites freely communicated with foreigners, no one forbade it, as it was before and as it became later again. The park laid by the participants of the festival was named "Friendship Park", where the word "friendship" meant precisely friendship between peoples. In some sources, to this day, the unofficial name "People's Friendship Park" is sometimes found. Therefore, many sculptures that are a gift from other states , are erected exactly here.Jumping ahead, let us say that Cervantes is far from the last monument in this series.
Just behind the monument to Cervantes, in the depths of the park, there is another sculptural composition. Let's head towards her. Three sculptures, two women, one of whom is holding a baby and a man, this is “Children of the World”.
The monument, confirming the above, is a gift from the capital of Finland, the city of Helsinki. It appeared in Moscow in 1990, at the same time a monument to the Soviet sculptor Yu. Kiryukhin "World Peace" was erected in Helsinki.
Let's return to the monument to Cervantes and continue along the Leningradskoe highway. Ahead we see an intersection, and, before reaching it, a sculpture is located to our left: a man and a woman are holding a huge basket of fruit in their hands.
This allegorical composition is called Fertility. Its author is the Soviet sculptor V.I. Mukhina, creator of the world famous monument "Worker and Collective Farm Woman". The sculpture that we see in front of us is an enlarged copy of the original, created after the death of Mukhina by her students.
Looking ahead, let us say that Fertility is part of an ensemble consisting of two sculptural groups. The second group, called "Bread", we will see a little later.
Behind "Fertility", closer to the Leningradskoe highway, between two symmetrically planted birches there is a small granite stele.
The inscription is made in Spanish, there are no explanations in Russian, so here is its literal translation: "Carlos Fonseca Amador. Founder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua. Planted the Tree of Friendship here during the VI World Youth Festival of Students in Moscow."
Moving on. We come to the intersection of the alley along the Leningradskoe highway, with the alley going deep into the park. It is worth stopping here and looking around. To our left, behind Leningradka, is the spire of the River Station.
In the depths of the park, behind the trees, you can see a pedestal of yellow stone.
The monument itself is not visible, we will definitely approach it, but a little later.
First, let's pay attention to the sculpture, located directly in the direction of travel, to the left of us. This is the same sculptural group "Bread" mentioned above.
It depicts two women holding a sheaf of wheat. The sculptures "Bread" and "Fertility" are made in a similar manner, it is clear even to an average person who is ignorant of the intricacies of sculptural skill that they are part of a single ensemble.
We will walk a little more along Leningradka and stop at a monument depicting a man with a long beard in an toe-length dress and obviously not European pointed shoes. This is a monument to Rabindranath Tagore, an Indian writer and thinker.
It is not hard to guess that the monument is a gift to Moscow from India.
We will return to the crossroads and proceed deep into the park, where we saw another monument. When the foliage has parted, our gaze will see a ten-meter stele of yellow stone, located on a cylindrical dais. The bas-relief adorning the stele depicts two women releasing pigeons into the sky. This is the Monument to the Hungarian-Soviet Friendship.
The monument was presented to Moscow in 1975, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the liberation of Hungary from the Nazi invaders. It is an exact copy of the monument erected in the Friendship Park of the city of Budapest. The choice of material is also symbolic: the stele is made of pyrogranite. This ceramic material is made in only one place on earth, the Hungarian city of Pecs.
We follow the alley going deep into the park. After passing about 30 meters, we will see a tiled path leaving to the left. Let's turn on her.
After passing along it, we will see on the right hand a small obelisk, which depicts a girl planting flowers. The inscription under the image reads: "Danish thanks to the feat of the Soviet Union."
Nearby, a small plate is mounted in the ground with the inscription: "A memorial stele is a gift from the Danish association of disabled people in the struggle for freedom as a token of gratitude to the Soviet people for their decisive contribution to the defeat of Hitler's fascism. Installed on May 9, 1986. Author-sculptor E. Frederiksen."
On the other side of the path, you can see a chestnut growing separately from other trees.
At its foot is a small stone and a tablet.
Coming closer, we will read the inscription on it: “The Tree of the World. Planted on May 9, 1993 in honor of the "World Run of Peace", carrying the ideals of Peace, Unity, Concord and Harmony. It is included as a monument of peace in the International Peacekeeping Non-Governmental Program at the UN "Sri Chinmoy's World Inflorescences". Sri Chinmoy is an Indian public figure, the creator of his own movement, the main principles of which are peace and unity of peoples.
Let's go back to the alley and follow it further. We will soon be entering a vast open space set in a recess, well below the general ground level in the park.
Long before the creation of the Friendship Park, there was a sand pit of a brick factory here. Later, when the quarry was closed, part of it was naturally filled with water, forming the Festival ponds (we will soon reach them), and the non-flooded part was equipped for sports grounds. Here they play volleyball, rugby, and the largest area is given over to practicing such an exotic sport for Russia as baseball.
It depicts two figures, a girl and a youth, releasing pigeons into the sky. The monument was erected in 1985, when the World Festival of Youth and Students, the twelfth in a row, was also held in Moscow.
From the site where the monument is located, along the bank of the northernmost of the Festival ponds, a small alley leaves, leading us back towards the exit from the park.
The alley is lined with rowan trees, at its beginning (or at the end, depending on which side you look at) there is an interesting stone. The inscription on it says that this alley is named after Alisa Selezneva, a girl from the future, the heroine of children's books by Kir Bulychev and the film "Guest from the Future" adored by Soviet children. The plate depicts Alice herself and the fantastic bird Talker - her faithful friend.
The alley was laid in 2001 by grown-up fans of Bulychev's work. In autumn they come here for ripe mountain ash and make a special tincture from it, which is called "Alisovka".
After walking down the alley, we will return to the baseball court. Let's go around it on the right side. In cloudless weather, in the distance, you can see the spire of the Ostankino tower.
A small obelisk made of black granite, near which you can always see fresh flowers, candles and other memorable symbols, contrasts sharply with the previous one with a comic childish stone.
Along the path, lined with paving stones, and after some distance turning into an asphalt one, we go to the exit from the park.
At the end of the path we see a modern yellow building.
This is the rear facade of the Rechnoy Shopping Center. Having skirted it on the left side, we find ourselves at the starting and at the same time the final point of our route, at the lobby of the Rechnoy Vokzal metro station.
This concludes our walk.
“In every house there is a place where unnecessary gifts are put: a cozy little box where ridiculous porcelain dogs, gnarled shepherds, cheap perfumes end their days - everything that will never come in handy, but it’s a pity to throw it away. In this sense, cities are worse - they are sometimes given something that is embarrassing to show, and it is impossible not to show. For example, monuments as a sign of eternal friendship and deep disposition " (Izvestia newspaper, 2006). Well, in fact, in continuation about the Festival Ponds - a few photos of the park itself and its monuments.
The popular park near the current metro station "Rechnoy Vokzal" has existed since 1957. The park was laid out as a sign of the eternal friendship of peoples in 1957, the year of the capital.Sixth World Festival of Youth and Students. A good tradition of this festival was the opening of commemorative alleys of friendship in the cities that hosted the festival. In Moscow, it was decided to lay out a whole park.
1. Archival photographs of the breakdown of the friendship park. Photos from here ... By the way, a gorgeous article about the history of the creation of the Friendship Park in Moscow is the memoirs of one of the architects - V.I. Ivanov. When the trees were small.))))
2. The central monument of the Friendship Park is, in fact, the Druzhba monument itself. This monument appeared in the park in 1985.
3. Not far from "Druzhba" along the bank of one of the Festival ponds there is a small footpath. At the very beginning of this path there is a huge boulder with a metal plaque "Alice named after Alisa Selezneva". Here is an image of the heroine of my childhood with a bird-Talker on her shoulder.
A granite stone with this tablet looks a little like a tombstone from afar, so, apparently, I have already met this place on the Internet with a description of "Alisa Selezneva's Grave". Surprisingly nearby, but in the open spaces of the Russian Internet, it turns out there is even a whole fan club "Guests from the Future". And their site is called Mielofon , in honor of the mysterious crystal that caused all the fuss in the film. By the way, there is also the history of the creation of this alley.
4. On the alley named after Alisa Selezneva, rowan trees named after Alisa Selezneva are in full bloom with flowers named after Alisa Selezneva.)))
5. Square near the "Friendship" monument.
6. Let's go further - the friendship park has preserved the worked-out quarries of the Nikolsky brick factory. Some of these quarries were filled with water, now they are Festival ponds. Two open pits are dry. One of them became an impromptu sports ground ...
7. The other, the one that is closer to the metro and smaller in size, is simply overgrown with trees.
8. Of course, the park of friendship cannot do without the tree of peace. The Peace Tree is a relatively small chestnut tree with a plaque and a huge boulder nearby. The tree was planted by the followers of the Indian philosopher and athlete Sri Chinmoy - in addition to poems and catchphrases, he is famous for lifting weights "in the name of harmony." The Peace Tree was planted in 1993. 
9. Much more expressive than the tree of peace, a huge lilac bush blooms nearby. 
10. Well, in fact, the monuments. Memorial plate to the Afghan soldiers. Quite modest. 
11. Slightly faded flowers on black marble. It's good that they are still brought here. 
12. Commemorative stele to the feat of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. The stella was donated to the city of Denmark and installed in the park on May 9, 1986. 
13. In 1990, another monument appeared in the Friendship Park, kindly donated to Muscovites by Finland. The monument bears a beautiful name - "Children of the World". True, a sign reminding of this was stolen by one of the visitors. And now, without identification marks, this extremely peculiar monument is associated with anything, but only with the idea and the world. IMHO. 
14. Why exactly such a performance of the monument, I still do not understand. Here is such a charming child, covered with cracks, one of the "children of the world" is holding in his arms. 
There is probably a lot I don’t understand about architecture.
15. Monumental and cumbersome, like the Hungarian "Ikarus" accordion, the monument of eternal conscientious-Hungarian friendship rises into the sky above the park. 
16. Miguel de Cervantes, changed his Madrid residence to the Friendship Park in 1981. Now he looks with longing in his eyes at the traffic jams of the Leningradskoye Highway, clutching the hilt of the sword, which was also carefully stolen. 
17. A gift to Moscow from the people of India - a monument to Rabindranath Tagore was erected in the park in 1991. 
18. Sculptural composition "Bread" by Vera Mukhina. Two very naked young ladies are holding a huge sheaf of wheat over their heads. 
19. One of the beauties. 
20. Another creation of Mukhina is a sculpture of fertility. A seated girl and a young man are holding a dish with all sorts of different delicacies in their hands. Everything would be fine, but upon closer examination I was shocked by the size of the young lady's legs. And so - against the background of "Children of the World" just wonderful.))))
In 1957, the sixth World Festival of Youth and Students was held in Moscow from July 28 to August 11. A traditional event and holiday of all five previous youth festivals was the planting of trees in the parks of those cities where the festivals were held, in memory of these unforgettable meetings. Individual trees were planted in Prague, Budapest, Bucharest and Berlin - symbolically from every continent of the world or delegation. In Warsaw, at the V World Festival of Youth and Students, the Friendship Alley was planted. And here in Moscow they decided to lay a whole park - the Park of Friendship!
This idea captivated us - Galina Yezhova, Anatoly Savin and me, Valentin Ivanov, young architects who graduated from the Moscow Architectural Institute only in July 1956 and worked in the Department of the Chief Artist of the Soviet Preparatory Committee for the festival ... it turned out that the location of the future park has not yet been determined. The drawing, which was shown to us as a possible option, was made on Poklonnaya Gora on the Mozhaisk highway ... There are two more sites in mind in other parts of the city. We all agreed to go together, with our chief artist B.G. Knoblokom, to see both Poklonnaya Gora, and plots in the area of the future Profsoyuzny Prospekt and on Leningradskoye Highway, where the old worked-out quarries of the Nikolsky brick factory exist opposite the park of the Khimki river station.
After getting acquainted with the potential sites, everyone unanimously came to the conclusion that there was no better place for the future park than quarries filled with clear water, separated by picturesque isthmuses and surrounded by hilly relief formed by overburden during their development ...
We agree that the emblem of the Moscow festival - a festival chamomile with five multi-colored petals, symbolizing the 5 continents of the world, must certainly be reflected in the park's layout and in its various spatial forms. Therefore, along the rhombus formed by two alleys leading from the main square, we place 5 round areas, united by the ligature of narrow walking paths - again symbols of the five continents, whose representatives should take part in the park laying ceremony during the festival days. We dream that subsequently, on each site, there should be sculptural compositions, by the nature of their artistic solution and content consonant with each continent, Unfortunately, even today, almost 50 years later, this remains a dream, although more and more new sculptures and memorial signs, unforeseen then by our project, constantly appear on the territory of the park ...
At our construction site, there was only one team of landscaping workers from the Moszelenstroy trust of the then Moscow Landscaping Administration, ten people headed by the foreman Vitaly Ivanovich Shilov, and there was only one old bulldozer that was constantly breaking down from the machinery. Of course, there was not enough energy for cleaning the area from garbage, for simple planning work on arranging lawns and for preparing seats for future memorable plantings. Therefore, A.N. Shelepin instructed the Moscow Komsomol to take part in preparing the territory for the future holiday. And for almost two months, every working day, at about sixteen o'clock, a line of buses brought six hundred to eight hundred Komsomol members to our construction site. Our task was to prepare the next front of work for them, which we, architects and builders, coped with quite successfully. The guys and girls worked for three hours with rakes and shovels, and then went to swim in orderly rows in the ponds of the future park. And everyone was very pleased with the accomplished business ...
The park laying festival took place on August 1, 1957 in the afternoon and attracted nearly 5 thousand delegates, festival guests and numerous residents of the surrounding areas to the participation, although we had previously expected no more than a thousand. For many of them, especially representatives of the southern continents, our spruces and birches were exotic plants. They were very happy to land them in the places we had prepared. Moscow pioneers gave them a solemn obligation to care for the planted plants, and the protesters left their names and addresses in plastic bags in the form of tree leaves.
When the Friendship Park was created, there was no Levoberezhny district and the metro in these places yet. Construction began here only a few years after the opening of the park. There are many monuments here now.
From the estate to the palace and park ensemble: an architectural and historical cheat sheetCentral - "Festival Flower" - appeared in 1985. On it, four-meter bronze figures of a young man and a girl release pigeons into the sky. The sculpture symbolizes a happy youth and a peaceful future.
At the main entrance to the park, there is a monument to the Hungarian-Soviet friendship by sculptors E.V. Vuchetich, J.K. Strobl. It was presented to Moscow by the residents of Budapest in 1976. This is a twin monument - its twin brother is located in Budapest.
In 1957, the Nicaraguan revolutionary Carlos Fonseca Amador attended the festival of youth and students in Moscow. In his honor, a memorial sign was erected with an inscription in Spanish: Carlos Fonseca Amador. Founder of the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua. I planted a tree of friendship here during the VI World Youth Festival of Students in Moscow.
Also in the Friendship Park there is a sculpture "Children of the World", a monument to the writer and poet Rabindranat Tagore, a monument to the hero of the Kyrgyz heroic epic Manas the Magnanimous, a memorial plaque "To the soldiers who fell in Afghanistan", sculptures "Bread" and "Fertility", created according to sketches by Vera Mukhina after her death. In 1981, a copy of the Madrid monument to Cervantes by A. Sol came here, and a copy of the monument to Pushkin by O. Komov went to Madrid. Cervantes' sword turned out to be a weak point - in 2000 it was stolen. The monument was restored several times, but each time it ended in the loss of the sword. Therefore, we decided to leave it as it is.
And the most favorite attraction of the guests of the Friendship Park is the Alisa Selezneva Alley. It was opened by a group of enthusiasts on October 6, 2001. The ceremony was also attended by the author of the book "The Adventures of Alice" Kir Bulychev and actress Natalya Guseva, who played the main role in the film "Guest from the Future".
There are also many ponds and bridges in the Friendship Park, there is a rugby and baseball field, where there are always many foreign guests. And on weekends, fans of aeromodelling sports gather in the park and organize competitions.
They say that...... fans of Kir Bulychev's creativity annually harvest rowan berries and make a tincture of them called "Alisovka".
Friendship Park in photographs from different years:
Can you tell us something else about the Friendship Park?Flowers have always been a special element in the traditions and culture of the peoples of the world - medicinal and poisonous, amazing in shape and unusual in color, rare and growing at every step - since prehistoric times they have been used in cult rites and religious sacraments. Some types of flowers grow on almost all continents, but individual representatives of the flora are so rare that they are considered the property of a particular area, becoming a symbol of the country and the entire nation.
Rare red flowers - symbols of the states of Australia
The large, red-colored Waratah (Telopea speciosissima) is a large shrub or scrub of the Proteaceae family, a symbol of New South Wales in Australia. Telopea grows up to 4 m in height and about 2 m in width, and its inflorescences reach about 10 cm in diameter and consist of about 250 individual flowers. It blooms in a bright crimson color in the fall in the form of a large ball or cone in the undergrowth and in sunny glades.
Local aborigines have always considered Waratah to be a totem and used it in ritual ceremonies, composing legends about the beautiful flower. An ancient legend tells of a beautiful girl named Krubi, in love with a young warrior who dies in battle. Heartbroken, she dies, and in the place of her death the red flowers of Varatah grow. Due to its unusual shape in the 19th and 20th centuries, the rare flower became a popular motif of Australian Art Nouveau, and since 1956, an annual flower festival has been held in Sydney, dedicated to the amazing beauty of Telopea.
Desert Pea - Swainsona Formosa or Sturt's Desert Pea is the symbol of the state of South Australia, famous for its blood-red inflorescences with black onion-shaped centers. It is one of Australia's most beautiful wildflowers and is found in its driest regions. The red flower got its name from the Latin formosa, which means beautiful, and from the name of an English botanist who found it in 1699. Formosa buds, 9 cm in size, grow on 15 cm erect stems scattered over a creeping stem that can grow up to 2 m in length. In 1961, the red peas of the desert were proclaimed the floral coat of arms of the state, being at that time already a widely used motif in the art of the Green Continent, as well as a decorative element in the work of the indigenous aborigines and part of their culture.
Unusually named Anigozanthos manglesii or Kangaroo Paw, which means kangaroo foot, was declared the emblem of the state of Western Australia in 1960. This one of the rarest flowers in the world blooms in late August and is characterized by its long, gray-green stems about 1.5 meters high. From spring to the end of summer, two-colored inflorescences, resembling spread fingers, in which green color surprisingly flows into red, gradually appear on the initially "bald" tips of the kangaroo's foot stems.
The most beautiful flowers in the world - symbols of the countries and peoples of Africa
Little Zimbabwe managed to get a very beautiful and rare flower Gloriosa superba as a symbol of the country - a fiery lily or tiger's claw, which was used in medicine in ancient times - both as a medicine and as a poison. This plant of unusual beauty is distributed over most of Africa and Asia and belongs to the category of climbing - sometimes it grows up to 2.5 m in height, and its bright red flowers with "ruffles" at the edges reach 8 cm. The main growing area of Gloriosa magnificent - and sand dunes of Africa, but it is known in China, India and other regions of Asia.
Blood lily is extremely poisonous - its flowers, stems and especially the tuberous rhizome contain colchicine, a toxic alkaloid that can be fatal if an animal or a person ingests the plant. In ancient times, the red flower, resembling fire in its outlines, was considered magical in many cultures of the world - it was part of religious rituals and sacraments.
Royal protea (Protea cynaroides) or giant protea is the national symbol of South Africa, against the background of its 1600 congeners it stands out in appearance by the considerable size of flowers, which sometimes reach 30 cm in diameter.With a thick long root and large fleshy leaves, Protea is optimally adapted to difficult climatic conditions South Africa - dry summers and rainy cold winters. In addition, a large number of dormant shoots of the Protea root system make the flower so tenacious that it calmly survives numerous fires, reviving almost immediately from the ashes.
The name of the flower comes from the many-sided Greek god Proteus and is perfect for a plant that is distinguished by a large variety of shapes and colors of leaves. Protea flowers range from vanilla white to intense crimson and red, but the most valuable are pink inflorescences. The stem of this unusual flower can reach a height of 30 cm to 2 m and produce 6 to 10 buds per flowering season. Such large, mostly miniature sunbirds - Cinnyris chalybeus, Nectarinia famosa, Promerops cafer - are pollinated. A protected and iconic place for the Republic of South Africa, the symbol of Cape Town - Table Mountain, is famous for its National Park, where the beautiful Protea lives in all its biodiversity.
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