Gorky Park (Maxim Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure)

The Maxim Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure is one of Moscow's largest and most popular recreational areas, covering a total of 219.7 hectares and combining the park's formal parterre section, the Neskuchny Garden, the slopes of the Sparrow Hills, and the Muzeon Park of Arts, a museum of contemporary sculpture. The Neskuchny Garden took shape in the first third of the 19th century: in 1826 Emperor Nicholas I purchased the former estate of the Trubetskoy princes and gave it this name ("Not Boring"), which later extended to the neighboring estates of the Orlov and Golitsyn families, united into a single park complex.

The territory of the future park on Krymsky Val first took on a new form in 1923, when it hosted the All-Russia Agricultural and Handicraft-Industrial Exhibition, designed by the architect Ivan Zholtovsky, winner of an all-Russia competition; the only building from that time to survive to the present day is the "Mechanical Engineering" pavilion, also known as "Shestigrannik" (the Hexagon). On 16 March 1928 the presidium of the Moscow City Council decided to establish the Soviet Union's first park of culture and leisure on the site of the former exhibition, the Neskuchny Garden, and the Sparrow Hills, conceived as a venue for the "mass propaganda of Soviet culture" and the "resolute struggle against hooliganism, ignorance, and darkness." The park's layout was first led by the avant-garde architect Konstantin Melnikov, and from 1929 by El Lissitzky, who sought to turn the park into a "health factory."

The unfinished park opened to visitors on 12 August 1928: on its very first day it was visited free of charge by more than one hundred thousand people, and over its first, incomplete season by about one and a half million. In 1932 the park was named after the writer Maxim Gorky. The period led by director Betty Glan, who headed the park from 1929 to 1937, is described by contemporaries and historians as its "golden age." Later the architect Alexander Vlasov also worked on the park's appearance, and the present arch of the main entrance on Krymsky Val was built in 1955 to a design by the architect Georgy Shchuko.

Since 2011 the park has undergone a large-scale redevelopment of its public spaces, continuing to this day: the embankments have been renovated, new pedestrian and cycling routes laid out, and modern pavilions, an open-air cinema, and an ice rink opened. Today Gorky Park remains one of the main places for leisure and civic celebrations in Moscow, known beyond Russia's borders by its international name, Gorky Park.