Europe Square

Eurasia Square, known as Europe Square until July 2024, is located in the Dorogomilovo District next to Kievsky Railway Station, between Berezhkovskaya Embankment and Kievsky Square on the bank of the Moskva River. This compact urban space was created as a symbolic gesture of international cooperation and today remains one of the recognizable landmarks of the station district, known above all for its large-scale sculptural composition with a fountain at its center.

Construction took one year, from autumn 2001 to autumn 2002, and was a joint initiative of the Russian and Belgian sides, who conceived the site as a gesture of friendship between the two countries; similar squares built around the same idea appeared in other cities on the continent. The architectural design was developed by Yuri Platonov, who at the time headed the architectural service of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The fountain's original design was meant to be different, but the city authorities of Brussels donated to Moscow an abstract work by the Belgian sculptor Olivier Strebelle, and it was around this piece that Platonov designed the water complex, which began operating on September 15, 2002.

The sculpture illustrates the ancient Greek myth of the abduction of Princess Europa by Zeus transformed into a bull: a structure of interwoven steel tubes forms the bull's head, within whose horns the figure of a girl can be discerned, and the whole composition rises almost 18 meters. Its pedestal is a four-tiered fountain basin 50 meters in diameter, with 354 nozzles and about 3.5 kilometers of concealed stainless-steel pipes. Forty-eight columns bearing flagpoles are set around the perimeter of the square, and night illumination is provided by thousands of LED fixtures that color the water jets in various hues.

Originally the flagpoles flew the flags of European countries, but in March 2023 they were removed without official explanation and replaced by a giant Russian tricolor. In 2004, by order of Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the fountain's lighting was modernized, increasing the number of fixtures more than fivefold. On July 24, 2024, by decree of Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, the square was renamed Eurasia Square, and the flagpoles began flying the flags of the countries of the Eurasian space. Nearby stands a foundation stone for a future monument to the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia.

Today the square remains part of the station infrastructure of the Kiev direction and a gathering point for passengers and local residents: in summer the illuminated fountain operates, and the sculpture “The Abduction of Europa” is considered one of the largest abstract monuments in Moscow. The space is used for walks and photography against the backdrop of the railway station and the Moscow-City skyscrapers, visible from the nearby embankment.

The square's history — from a symbol of European integration to a renaming amid political change — has made it not only an architectural landmark but also a peculiar social marker of the era. The scale of the sculpture and the engineering of the fountain still set this place apart from other station-area spaces in the Russian capital.