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      The Lilac Garden and Round Pond

      ⏱ 3 h🚶 500 m + 🚕🍽 1📍 4 stops
      🐢 A little — under 3 km

      East Moscow with a stroller: the quiet, smooth paths of the Lilac Garden, then the heart of Izmailovo Park — Round Pond, a playground and a café.

      👶 With kids🌳 Parks and nature🏘 Off the centre
      👶 under 3, 3–6 years · ✓ stroller-friendly

      The garden is easy to reach from MCC Lokomotiv (lifts, 15 minutes on foot), and Round Pond from MCC Shosse Entuziastov along Narodny Prospekt. It's 4 km between the garden and the pond — take a taxi.

      🗺 Open in Yandex Maps (with transit)
      1. 1
        🌳 Lilac Garden (Sirenevy Sad)
        Щёлковское ш., вл. 1
        🚪 entrance from Shchyolkovskoye Highway
        A garden with hundreds of lilac bushes, many varieties bred by Leonid Kolesnikov, including "Beauty of Moscow".
        Lilacs bloom in May, but in October it's simply quiet: smooth paths and benches, and the baby sleeps peacefully in the stroller. A stroller-accessible toilet is at the entrance (9:00 to 21:00).
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Lilac Garden (Sirenevy Sad)
        © Gennady Grachev from Moscow, Russia · CC BY 2.0
        Lilac Garden (Sirenevy Sad)
        © Gennady Grachev from Moscow, Russia · CC BY 2.0
        Lilac Garden (Sirenevy Sad)
        © Gennady Grachev from Moscow, Russia · CC BY 2.0
        Lilac Garden (Sirenevy Sad)
        © Ulaisaeva · CC BY-SA 4.0
        • In 1954, on Leonid Kolesnikov's initiative, a lilac nursery was created here, and it became a garden in 1975; the neighboring boulevard was named Sirenevy (Lilac) in 1960.
        • Kolesnikov was a self-taught breeder and a driver by profession; in 1952 he received a Stalin Prize for new lilac varieties.
        • He bred about 300 varieties, of which about 50 survive.
        • Kolesnikov selected "Beauty of Moscow" in 1947 from seedlings of a cross between the Belle de Nancy variety and his own variety "I. V. Michurin".
        • "Dzhambul" grows here — the world's first lilac with a white edge along the petals.
        • Kolesnikov's lilacs grow in the grounds of Buckingham Palace (the "Galina Ulanova" variety), but the story of one at the Capitol is a myth.
        • The popular story that Kolesnikov was Marshal Zhukov's driver is not confirmed either.
      2. 🚕 taxi, about 15 min to Izmailovo Park — with a stroller order a car with a child seat
      3. 2
        🌳 Round Pond in Izmailovsky Park
        Измайловский парк, площадь Круглого пруда
        🚪 entrance from 1st Izmaylovskogo Zverintsa Street
        An almost perfectly round pond from which the alleys of the old forest park radiate like rays.
        Round Pond is the centre of the park: an asphalt ring around the water, ducks, benches. On weekdays before lunch there are hardly any people. The toilet is at Alleya Bolshogo Kruga, 7, building 1.
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        Round Pond in Izmailovsky Park
        © Lukdmi · CC BY-SA 4.0
        Round Pond in Izmailovsky Park
        © MBH · CC BY 4.0
        • 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.
      4. 🚶 on foot
      5. 3
        ✨ Playground by the Round Pond in Izmailovo Park
        аллея Большого Круга, Измайловский парк
        A playground in the wooded part of Izmailovo Park, right next to the Round Pond.
        A playground two minutes north of the pond: slides and swings for toddlers. At weekends after 12:00 there are many older kids — come earlier.
        📖 More about the placeCollapse
        • The Big Circle alley together with the Small Circle alley rings the Round Pond and survives from the old layout.
        • In the 1930s a “garden city of entertainment” was built around the Round Pond: pavilions, rides, a parachute tower, a circus tent and a boat station.
        • Tsar Alexey Mikhailovich chose these forests for his palace estate because he was a keen hunter.
        • In 2011–2012 the park's children's and sports playgrounds were renewed and the balustrade of the Round Pond was restored.
      6. 🚶 on foot
      7. 4
        ☕️ Pizzamento Pizzeria in Izmailovo Park
        Московский пр., 4, стр. 2 (Измайловский парк)
        ▮▮▮▯▯
        Lunch 5 minutes from the pond and playground (the Lesnoy Uyut café is closed). A kids' menu, an entrance with a ramp, and the courtyard is stroller-friendly; you order at the till, and at weekends there can be a queue — come before 12:00.
        🍴 A park pizzeria 5 minutes from the Round Pond: kids' menu, a ramp and step-free entrance, a stroller area and a summer veranda in the courtyard. You order at the counter, no waiters; on weekends expect a queue and disposable tableware. What to order: Neapolitan wood-fired pizza, spaghetti carbonara, chicken soup and a kids' set.

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