The Round Pond and playground in Izmailovsky Park

⏱ 55 min🚶 600 m🍽 1📍 3 stops

🐢 A little — under 3 km

An asphalt ring around a pond with ducks, almost empty on weekday mornings, a playground with slides for toddlers two minutes away and pizza with a children's menu.

👶 With kids🌳 Parks and nature🏘 Off the centre⏱ An hour or so

👶 under 3, 3–6 years · ✓ stroller-friendly

To reach the garden, it's convenient from MCC Lokomotiv (lifts, 15 minutes on foot); to the Round Pond, from MCC Shosse Entuziastov along Narodny Prospekt. Between the garden and the pond is 4 km — take a taxi.

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🌳 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.
The Round Pond is the centre of the park: an asphalt ring around the water, ducks, benches. On weekdays before lunch there's almost no one. Toilet: Alleya Bolshogo Kruga, 7, bldg 1.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Lukdmi · CC BY-SA 4.0
© 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.
🚶 on foot
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✨ 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. On weekends after 12:00 there are a lot of older children — 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.
🚶 on foot
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☕️ Pizzamento Pizzeria in Izmailovo Park
Московский пр., 4, стр. 2 (Измайловский парк)
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Lunch 5 minutes from the pond and playground (the café Lesnoy Uyut is closed). There is a children's menu, a ramp at the entrance and a courtyard that's convenient with a stroller; order at the till, and on 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.