Kremlin to open renewed Ivanovskaya Square now decorated by public garden in place of Building N14
MOSCOW. May 8 (Interfax) - A new small public garden on the grounds of the Moscow Kremlin, which has replaced the dismantled building N14, will for the first time open to visitors from Tuesday, May 10.
Tourists will have an opportunity to enjoy the sights of the Kremlin from a new angle, opening up a unique perspective of the Kremlin cathedrals from the site where the administrative building had once stood.
The Russian Presidential Property Management Department said it has completed the dismantling of Building N14 and converting the site into a park zone.
"On May 10, the 1.6-hectare park zone will be welcoming its first guests, the visitors of Moscow Kremlin," the Department said in a statement obtained by Interfax on Saturday.
The concept of making green and beautiful the space freed up by demolition of Building N14 is based on the archeological discovery of the sites of its historical predecessors, the Chudov Monastery and the Ascension Convent, the department said.
Their foundations are designated on the site with a green fence of Thuja occidentalis "Danica."
The park zone covers over eleven hectares, with 18 blue spruces, some 3,000 coniferous shrubs (mountain pine, junipers, Thuja) and around 300 deciduous shrubs (lilac, spiraea, ninebark, cinquefoil). Also, over 1,000 roses and more than 20,000 begonias will be planted here at the end of May.
According to the press and public relations center of the Russian Federal Protection Service, with the completion of work at the site of Building N14, the tourist itinerary, passing through the Kremlin into the Red Square near the Spasskiye Gates, has now been restored.
The demolition of the 14th unit of the Kremlin, which was located between the Spasskiye Gates and the Senate Palace, began in November 2015.
The proposal to remove this administrative building was made by Russian President Vladimir Putin a year ago. The unit was built in 1932-1934 on the sites of the Chudov and Voznesensky Monasteries and the Small Nikolayevsky Palace, which were destroyed in 1929-1930. It was among the buildings that formed the Ivanovskaya Square.
In 2001, the building was closed for reconstruction, which was never completed.
The decision to start dismantling it was made after the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization confirmed that the building was not an architectural monument of the Moscow Kremlin and was not on its list of world cultural heritage sites.
Putin backed the idea of rebuilding the monastery and the convent, which were destroyed in the 1930s.
Today, the president's initiative is being studied by experts. The Presidential Property Management Department said earlier: "Relevant agencies are thoroughly analyzing all aspects of the initiative, scrutinizing every option, and later will make a decision reflecting the opinions of all organizations involved."
The Department said that Building N14, with its structures and equipment, was dismantled in three-shift work between October 2015 and May 2016. In all, some 1,100 personnel worked on the site. The dismantling was conducted by eleven lifting mechanisms and over 30 pieces of light-duty equipment. Each day, 50 trucks removed reinforced-concrete structures, bricks and metal structures, over 1,000 tonnes in all. Over 600 pieces of electrical, plumbing and ventilation equipment and fittings were dismantled and removed.