Alexander Garden

Alexander Garden stretches along the Kremlin's western wall from Revolution Square to the Moskva River and covers about ten hectares. The park is divided into three consecutive sections — the Upper, Middle, and Lower Gardens — bringing together monuments from different eras, from the early sixteenth-century Kutafya Tower to the Great Patriotic War memorial. It is one of Moscow's oldest public parks and a traditional venue for civic celebrations beneath the Kremlin walls.

Until the end of the eighteenth century, the Neglinnaya River flowed here, crossed by four bridges — the Trinity, Resurrection, Petrovsky, and Kuznetsky — and its banks were a favorite spot for public festivities. Over time the river grew shallow and polluted, and after the Patriotic War of 1812, by order of Emperor Alexander I, it was enclosed in a three-kilometer culvert under the direction of the builder Yegor Cheliyev. On the freed-up land, architect Osip Bove laid out gardens as part of Moscow's post-fire reconstruction — the work lasted from 1819 to 1823, and the park was originally called the Kremlin Garden. It received its present name in 1856, the year of Alexander II's coronation, in honor of his predecessor, Alexander I.

The Upper Garden stretches 350 meters from Revolution Square to the Trinity Tower and is adorned with the “Ruins” grotto, built by Bove in 1820 from black granite, red brick, and fragments of houses destroyed during the French invasion. The Middle Garden, 382 meters long and laid out on the site of the former tsar's apothecary garden, leads to the Kutafya Tower and Trinity Bridge — the oldest surviving parts of the Kremlin's early sixteenth-century fortifications. The shortest, the Lower Garden, at 132 meters, was partly cut off in the 1930s during the construction of the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge and is closed to visitors today.

Monuments in the garden have come and gone over time: in 1913, an obelisk by Sergei Vlasyev marking the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty was erected at the main entrance; after the revolution it was converted into a monument to revolutionaries, and its original appearance was restored only in 2013. In 1918, a monument to Robespierre by Beatrice Sandomirskaya briefly stood on the obelisk's site — it was found destroyed within days under unexplained circumstances. In Soviet times, the Upper Garden gained a memorial to those who fell defending Moscow, and in the twenty-first century monuments to Patriarch Hermogenes and Emperor Alexander I were added.

Along Manezhnaya Square, the garden adjoins a six-part fountain complex with sculptures by Zurab Tsereteli, installed in 1996. A large-scale reconstruction in 2012–2013 renewed the greenery: about two hundred trees and more than two thousand shrubs were planted, a 750-square-meter rose garden was laid out, thousands of meters of asphalt were replaced with paving stones, and new lighting was installed.

Today Alexander Garden remains one of the most visited places in Moscow's historic center — host to civic celebrations, brass band festivals, and commemorative ceremonies. The juxtaposition of sixteenth-century architectural monuments with twentieth- and twenty-first-century memorials makes the park a kind of chronicle of Russian history beneath the Kremlin walls.