🌳 Round Pond in Izmailovsky Park

Измайловский парк, площадь Круглого пруда

An almost perfectly round pond from which the alleys of the old forest park radiate like rays.

The pond was dug in the 17th century as a decoration for the palace estate of Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich.
At first it was called Sofronovsky — after the neighboring village of gardeners who served the tsar's estate.
The pond itself and the man-made island in its center are actually horseshoe-shaped; because of the many nightingales, the island was called Nightingale Island.
After the court moved to Petersburg, the pond became marshy: on maps of the first half of the 19th century it is marked as Blueberry Bog.
Two concentric alleys survive around the pond — of the Big and Small Circles — and the name comes from them.
In the 1950s the People's Friendship alley by the pond turned in winter into a popular Moscow skating rink.
The pond measures 270 by 220 m; its two-year reconstruction was completed in 2009.