Millennium Park

Millennium Park — known to locals also by the anglicized nickname ‘Park Millennium’ — lies in the Vakhitovsky District on the northern shore of Lower Kaban Lake. This small garden right in the heart of the city was created specifically for Kazan’s thousandth-anniversary celebrations and has since served as one of the symbolic points on the festive route through the city’s historic core.

Before the early 2000s, an old residential quarter stood on this spot along Degtyarnaya Street, and the site itself had once been the junction of Poperechno-Georgievskaya and Uzenkaya streets in a low-lying area periodically flooded when the lake overflowed. The dilapidated houses were demolished by 2005, and over a single summer the city’s landscaping service laid out a new park on the cleared lot. The grand opening took place on 26 August 2005, during the celebrations marking the city’s millennium, when the heads of Russia’s regions who had come to Kazan planted blue spruces along the main avenue, which was named Millennium Avenue.

The design was created by the architect Viktor Morozov of the Tatinvestgrazhdanproekt institute; the park covers a total area of about five hectares. The perimeter is enclosed by a metal fence with zilant figures at its seven gates, and the paths, paved with cobblestones, are entirely pedestrian. All the avenues converge on a raised central platform with a round fountain some 36 meters across, its cauldron-shaped basin held up by figures of zilants, evoking the legend of the city’s founding. The designers named this central platform ‘the Crossroads’ — an image meant to allude to Kazan’s position between Eastern and Western cultures.

Not far from the fountain, along the avenue leading to the southeastern gates, stands a monument to the Bulgar poet Kul Gali, who died during the thirteenth-century Mongol invasion; it was unveiled at the same time as the park itself. Over time a custom took hold among Kazan residents of bringing wedding processions here — newlyweds throw coins into the cauldron-shaped fountain, wishing for family happiness. The zilant figures by the water have repeatedly fallen victim to vandals: in 2012 alone, four cases of damage to them were recorded.

As one of the city’s youngest gardens, Millennium Park is still developing its character: the birches, oaks, chestnuts, lindens, and rowans planted here remain young saplings for now. According to the designers’ concept, the grounds are meant to eventually be divided into several themed corners: a garden called ‘Origin,’ an Eastern garden, a garden named ‘Sorrow,’ a maidan-style open square, and a garden dedicated to love — though so far this plan has only been partly realized.

Today Millennium Park is a popular spot for relaxing and taking photographs within easy walking distance of the Ploshchad Tukaya metro station, and its central fountain with the zilants remains one of the recognizable symbols of modern Kazan, a reminder of the city’s founding legend and of the 2005 anniversary.