Field of Mars and Mikhailovsky Garden with a stroller

⏱ 50 min🚶 1.3 km🍽 1📍 3 stops

🐢 A little — under 3 km

The open space of the Field of Mars with its lilacs, a playground and a pond in the landscape-style Mikhailovsky Garden by the Savior on Blood, and lunch five minutes away at a restaurant with a kids' room.

👶 With kids🏛 History and architecture🌳 Parks and nature⏱ An hour or so

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

The nearby metro has no lifts — come by taxi. The garden paths are packed gravel. At the entrance of Goose Goose there are steps without a ramp: they'll help carry the stroller in, or you leave it in the cloakroom.

🗺 Open in Yandex Maps

1
🌳 Field of Mars
A huge field-square with lawns and lilacs, with a granite memorial to the Victims of the Revolution in the centre.
A short walk on flat granite paths to Mikhailovsky Garden; if it's windy, raise the stroller hood — the field is open.
📖 More about the placeCollapse
© Godot13 · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Комова Анастасия · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Florstein · CC BY-SA 4.0
- The square covers about 9 hectares — the second largest in the city after Moskovskaya Square.
- Under Peter I parades were held here and “amusement fireworks” were set off; the meadow was called the Great one, under Elizabeth the Tsaritsyn, and the Field of Mars from 1805.
- The monument to the Fighters of the Revolution, designed by Lev Rudnev, was unveiled on 7 November 1919; the inscriptions on the slabs were written by Lunacharsky.
- On 6 November 1957 the USSR's first eternal flame was lit here — the torch was brought from an open-hearth furnace of the Kirov Plant.
- In 1967 the flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow was lit from the fire on the Field of Mars.
- In the summer of 1942, during the siege, the whole field was given over to vegetable gardens.
🚶 on foot
2
🌳 Mikhailovsky Garden
🚪 entrance from the Griboedov Canal Embankment
🆓 free entry
A landscape garden behind the Russian Museum with a pond, lawns and Parland's ornate fence on the Savior on Blood side.
The playground is in the western part of the garden, closer to the Savior on Blood; benches nearby for mom. The garden closes earlier than the Summer Garden — check the hours on the Russian Museum's website.
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© Vyacheslav Bukharov · CC BY-SA 4.0
© Александровы АГ · CC BY-SA 4.0
© GAlexandrova · CC BY-SA 4.0
- In the early 18th century the garden was called the Third Summer Garden — to distinguish it from Peter I's other two gardens.
- From 1712 a residence for Catherine I was built here, and in the greenhouses the gardener grew bananas and pineapples.
- Under Anna Ioannovna part of the garden was set aside as a "jagd-garten" — a place to hunt deer, boar and hares.
- Parland's fence was put up in 1907, when part of the garden went to the Savior on Blood and the new canal embankment.
- In 2001 a full reconstruction of the garden began, after which the summer festival "Imperial Gardens of Russia" started to be held here.
🚶 on foot
3
🍽 Goose Goose Restaurant · 🧸 play area
Б. Конюшенная ул., 27
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Leave the garden toward the Savior on Blood — and it's five minutes across Konyushennaya Square. Ask for a table next to the kids' room and a high chair; the stroller will be left at the cloakroom.
🍴 An Italy Group restaurant by Konyushennaya Square with its own children's room and children's menu — a handy stop two steps from the Mikhailovsky Garden. What to order: for a toddler, a soup from the children's menu; for adults, pasta or risotto from the Italian menu.