The Tainitsky Garden is a garden on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin. It is located along the southern wall of the fortress, it got its name in honor of the Tainitskaya tower. Included in the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List. The part of the park bordering Ivanovskaya Square is called the Great Kremlin Square.
XIV-XIX centuries
Presumably, the park area on the territory of
the modern Tainitsky Garden has existed since the 14th century, while
its shape, name and size have changed several times. Green spaces were
located along the southern wall of the Kremlin next to the hill, which
housed the royal chambers. Due to its position, the territory was
originally called: "the garden under the mountain." In the 16th century,
a single-domed wooden chapel was erected in the southwestern part of the
garden plot near the Annunciation Tower. In 1731, the church was rebuilt
in stone by the decree of Anna Ioannovna, in history it is known as the
"Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Zhitny Dvor".
In the 17th century, Zhitny Dvor was located on the border of the park
and palace buildings, where stocks of rye, barley, buckwheat, peas,
flaxseed, as well as tin troughs and mill gears were stored.
It
is known that from the 15th to the 20th century there was a church of
Constantine and Helena on the plot of the garden near the Timothy Gates.
The first annalistic references to the temple date back to 1470 and
describe the fire that occurred. In the 1760s, the buildings of Zhitny
Dvor and the chamber of the cathedral clergy, which belonged to the
Church of Konstantin and Helena, were demolished. In their place, it was
planned to build the Grand Kremlin Palace designed by the architect
Vasily Bazhenov.
In 1823, a boulevard was laid out along the
southern wall of the Kremlin, and within a few years a "garden under the
mountain" was arranged. The site was cleared of dilapidated outbuildings
and alleys were designed, and two ramps were equipped that led to the
Kremlin Palace. Later, this park area was named after the Tainitskaya
Tower. Although some researchers believe that the Tainitsky Garden was
laid out only in 1890.
Designed at the end of the 19th century,
the monument to Alexander II was planned to be erected on the slope of
Ivanovskaya Square, leading to the Tainitsky Garden. In the 1890s,
large-scale geological surveys were carried out to study the soils in
this area, during which the remains of buildings of orders of the 17th
century were discovered. The monument to the emperor was a three-story
memorial complex, the supporting structure of which was installed on the
mainland at a depth of 17 meters due to the abundance of free-flowing
sands and a massive cultural layer. The building could only be seen from
the side of the garden and the Moscow River. On its roof there was an
open gallery with a monument made by the sculptor Alexander Opekushin.
When scientists carried out further research of the park area near the
river floodplain, water entered the geological pits, which prevented the
work. Archaeologist Nikolai Shcherbatov faced the same problem when, in
1894, he carried out excavations near the spinners of the Vodovzvodnaya
Tower.
After the government of the USSR moved to the Kremlin, a large-scale
beautification of the Kremlin was carried out during obligatory
Subbotniks and Sundays. During this period, lighting was carried out in
the park, a highway pavement was laid. The Tainitsky Garden was a
favorite place for walks of Vladimir Lenin. In 1918, the monument to
Alexander II was demolished, but the building on the roof of which it
was installed was partially preserved. Its foundation lay at a depth of
17 meters, which made it possible to bury the lower part of the
structure. In the summer of 1928, the Church of Constantine and Helena
was dismantled to expand the park. From the letters of the revolutionary
Vladimir Nevsky dated 1929, another reason for the liquidation of the
historical monument is known: “... on the site of the destroyed church
of Konstantin and Elena in order to build a sports ground in the
Kremlin, there is still no sports ground, but heaps of garbage are lying
around.” In 1932-1933, the Church of the Annunciation, along with the
chapel to the tower of the same name, was also demolished.
During
the Great Patriotic War, to mask the Kremlin, models of residential
buildings were built in the Tainitsky and Alexander Gardens, as well as
on Red Square. A section of the park near the eastern wall of the
fortress was covered with tarpaulin, painted under the roofs. In July
1941, two anti-aircraft batteries were installed in the Bolshoy Square,
and since August of the same year, personnel were trained in the garden
for a possible assault on the Kremlin. During this period, during the
bombing of the capital, 67 thermite-incendiary shells were dropped on
the territory of the fortress, two lighting shells hit the Tainitsky
Garden. The bombs were extinguished, defused and taken out of the
fortress. A year later, the disguise of the Kremlin was abandoned, since
the outlines of the buildings were still easily read along the
surrounding streets.
In 1946, young trees were planted in the
park, and in 1955, by order of Nikita Khrushchev, New Year's festivities
were organized on the territory of the Kremlin. For this purpose,
Sobornaya and Ivanovskaya squares were involved, as well as the western
part of the Tainitsky garden, where ice slides were organized. In the
1960s, New Year's festivities were also organized on the site of the
former Cathedral of Constantine and Helena. In 1967, a monument to
Vladimir Lenin was erected in the Tainitsky Garden. Veniamin Pinchuk was
the sculptor of the project, Sergey Speransky was the architect. The
monument depicted the leader, sitting on a bench and thoughtfully
examining the Kremlin. In 1995, the monument was transferred to the
Gorki Leninskiye Historical Museum-Reserve.
In 2007, the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of
Sciences and the Moscow Kremlin Museums carried out joint excavations on
the territory of the Tainitsky Garden. The total area of the studied
area was 693 m², the depth of the cultural layer in some places reached
ten meters. During the work, scientists dug up artifacts and residential
buildings of the 12th-18th centuries: basements, fences, drains, adobe
stoves, fragments of crosses, whole and broken clay vessels, household
utensils and fragments of military weapons. In total, about five
thousand exhibits were discovered, including the remains of people and a
camel, fragments of a weight of the Dyakov type (1st millennium BC) and
stucco smooth-walled Dyakovo ceramics (first centuries AD), as well as
the burnt remains of a jewelry workshop . The most valuable find was the
surviving birch bark document No. 3 with an ink text, which is the
longest of the ancient Russian texts found and the first economic
document of the XIV century from the Moscow Kremlin, which describes the
property of a certain Turabey, mentions his servants, “sufferers”
(dependent peasants), and also 26 horses of the Suzdal herd, transferred
to the management of a certain Koshchei (k) oshche).
In 2008,
according to the project of the sculptor Oleg Vitalyevich Ershov, the
fountain “Free Bird of Happiness” was installed in the garden. A small
spring is surrounded by a forged fence, and in the center of the
composition there is a statue of a peacock. In the same year, on the
territory of the Tainitsky Garden, Libyan politician Muammar Gaddafi
pitched a Bedouin tent during his visit, where he met with Vladimir
Putin and the French singer Mireille Mathieu.
In October 2011, a
fire broke out in the garden due to an electrical short circuit, during
which the change house burned down. The reconstruction project of the
14th building of the Kremlin, which took place in 2007-2015, included
the creation of new utility rooms with an area of 3.85 thousand m². They
were supposed to settle down in the Tainitsky garden. However, the
restoration was frozen, after which the building was dismantled. In
2017, it was announced the creation of an underground museum on the site
of the former administrative building, where, among other things, it was
planned to exhibit finds from the Tainitsky Garden.
In January
2013, the construction of a helipad for the President of Russia began on
the territory of the Tainitsky Garden, which was done without the
consent of UNESCO. During the work, the wooden stables that were in the
department of the Federal Security Service of Russia were demolished, a
meteorological and navigation station was installed, an underground
swamp was drained, and 18 trees and eight shrubs were moved to another
part of the park, and 54 spruce and arborvitae were planted. In total,
the work cost 200 million rubles.
In August 2014, an open day of
the Kremlin Riding School was held in the Tainitsky Garden. The
performance consisted of a performance by the Cavalry Escort of the
President of Russia and students of the academy.
In 2021, the
results of genetic studies of people who died in a fire during the
devastation of Moscow on August 26, 1382 by the troops of Tokhtamysh
were published. In an adult male (sample 1), the Y-chromosomal
haplogroup R1a1a1b1a2-Z280 (Origin: South Asia, Central Asia, West
Asia, or Eastern Europe) and the mitochondrial haplogroup K2 were
determined (Central Asia); in a boy (sample 2), the Y-chromosomal
haplogroup R1a1a1b1a1a-M458 and the mitochondrial haplogroup J1c were
determined (as in his mother (sample 3)) (Western Asia, Near East, the
Caucasus).
Spruces, arborvitae, junipers, forsythia, spirea, hydrangea and about two thousand species of perennial plants are planted in the Tainitsky Garden. The Cosmos oak grows in the garden, planted on April 14, 1961 by cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in honor of the first manned orbital flight. Until 1924, a parade ground was located on the site of the Big Square, later the square was planted with apple trees selected by the Michurin Research Institute of Horticulture. In 2007, the fir trees along the Kremlin walls were replaced with new ones, and 20 old trees were moved to the garden. A rare lilac bred by Leonid Kolesnikov also grows on this site. Bird houses with falcons, hawks and owls are equipped on the territory of the Tainitsky Garden to protect against crows and pigeons.