Poklonnaya Hill. Introduction.
Not far from the center of Moscow, 7 kilometers from the Kremlin, is one of the largest memorial complexes in Russia – Victory Park on Poklonnaya Hill, the area of which is 135 hectares.
Despite the name, now the hill is no longer there – it was razed during the construction of the park more than half a century ago. But the name remains.
The grand opening of the park and the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War took place on May 9, 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Victory. The original idea was expressed back in 1942 by one of the Moscow sculptors.
The five terraces of the central alley symbolize the five years of war, and the 141.8-meter-high obelisk specifies the duration of the war in days.
The location for the park was not chosen by chance. The first written mention of this hill, which the inhabitants of the flat East European Plain call a mountain, dates back to the 16th century. In 1368, the Lithuanian prince Olgerd stopped here with his army in anticipation of a battle with the Russians.
On October 24, 1508, the army of the Crimean Khan Mengli-Girey camped here, and in 1591 another Crimean Khan of Gaza, the Second Giray, came to the same place. In 1610, the Polish army of Stanislav Zholkiewski approached Moscow and stopped here, leading the Polish prince Vladislav to the Russian throne.
The most famous standing on the hill is when Napoleon Bonaparte waited for the keys to Moscow. It was this moment that Vasily Vereshchagin captured in his painting “Napoleon in front of Moscow, waiting for the boyars” (1891-1892).
On November 7, 1941, participants in a military parade on Red Square walked past this hill to the front to defend Moscow.
I would like to correct the version of the origin of this name voiced in the Russian and English Wikipedia articles. Yes, it comes from the word “to bow”, but not to the city. It is not in the Russian tradition to honor individual cities, rather than the entire Russian land. But Orthodox Christians have a custom of baptizing themselves and bowing at the sight of each church they encounter.
The painting with Napoleon depicts the glitter of the golden domes of Moscow churches. According to historians, there were “сорок сороков” of them in the city, i.e. forty times forty – more than one and a half thousand. One can only guess the reaction of the believing peasant, who lingered for at least five minutes in front of even a lonely church.
The territory is full of various monuments and memorial buildings: from a memorial synagogue and mosque to a small monument to frontline dogs. There is also a monument to the heroes of the WWI, rare in our country.
The internationalist soldiers, Chernobyl victims, victims of fascism and many others are immortalized in metal.
The park, like any park, is loved by residents: both old and young walk there, and there are plenty of mothers with strollers.
On weekends and holidays, events of various types are held: from military-patriotic
to the beach volleyball competition and the retro car parade.
To be honest, I wasn’t in the park itself, and even on the weekend. I simply didn’t have the energy for it. My main interest was the military-technical museum. On this piece of Google maps, this area is highlighted in color in the lower left corner.
The distance to the end of the central alley from the metro station is about two kilometers.
The museum has a long full official name:
And the abbreviated name: “Museum G.O.R.A.” There is a play on words here: the abbreviation of the full name in Russian “Главные Оружейные Реликвии Армии” is “Г.О.Р.А.” And the word “ГОРА” is a mountain. It’s the same as if the full English name would become the abbreviation M.O.U.N.T.A.I.N.
In conversation, this establishment is called “the museum on Poklonnaya Gora” or even familiarly “Poklonka”.
I did not find an English-language map, even on the English-language version of the site, so I translated it myself as best I could.
I will post the material in the sequence of the indicated thematic locations.
And here is the entrance.
To be continued …