Black Lake

Black Lake is a historic park right in the centre of Kazan, in a low-lying part of the Vakhitovsky District not far from Kremlyovskaya Street and Freedom Square. The name has survived from the body of water that once occupied this site, although the lake itself disappeared long ago — in its place one of the city’s oldest public spaces took shape.

In earlier centuries there were three lakes here at once — Black, Bathhouse and Clear — which served defensive and utilitarian purposes near the city’s fortifications. In the 18th century the provincial architect Vasily Kaftyrev improved Black Lake, deepening it and reducing the area of its surface. After the city was devastated during Pugachev’s siege, Empress Catherine II allocated funds for Kazan’s restoration, and a promenade garden gradually took shape on the lake’s shore. By the 1820s it had acquired the status of a public park, and in 1829 the banks were terraced and lined with tree-planted avenues; in 1847 the grounds were enclosed with a cast-iron railing, and in 1859 the merchant Belozyorov built the first pavilion housing a tavern.

The lake, growing shallower and boggier, drew complaints from residents over its unpleasant smell, and the city authorities decided to fill it in: by 1889 the lake had vanished entirely. The very next year the cleared space hosted the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition, and the plantings left behind formed the basis of a new public garden, variously called the Nikolayevsky or Leninsky Garden. In 1894 a fountain was installed there, turning into a skating rink in winter, and in the 1930s the so-called Lovers’ Arch appeared at the exit onto Lobachevsky Street, credited with unusual acoustic properties.

In 1925 Kazan bandy was born on the local skating rink, giving rise to the Dynamo club, and two years later the park was handed over to the sports society of the same name for a decade and a half. Over time the name ‘Black Lake’ acquired a second, less pleasant meaning for residents: state security agencies were located nearby on what is now Dzerzhinsky Street, and for Kazan residents the phrase became as much a byword for the agency as ‘Lubyanka’ was for Muscovites.

The park received the status of a protected architectural monument of republican significance in 2002, and in early 2011 residents held pickets against a plan to build an underground car park on the garden’s grounds. The dispute was resolved in favour of the green space: from summer 2015 to 2018 the Moscow-based studio Wowhaus, which had previously worked on Gorky Park and the Krymskaya Embankment in the capital, carried out a large-scale redevelopment — wooden decking, a pergola and an amphitheatre-style descent to the pond. Today Black Lake remains a favourite recreation spot for students of the neighbouring universities — Kazan Federal University and the Tupolev technical university — and a venue for city festivities: Maslenitsa, Sabantuy and City Day are celebrated here every year, alongside children’s rides and an open-air café.