The Neglinnaya and its bridges: why Alexander Garden has three sections

Alexander Garden is divided into three sections: the Upper, Middle and Lower Gardens. Their boundaries were shaped by the approaches to the Trinity and Borovitsky Gates, which crossed the strip of land along the Kremlin’s western wall. The Neglinnaya River was taken underground, but the routes of the two bridges were preserved. These boundaries therefore reflect the history of the river and the entrances to the fortress.

This becomes clear when an early plan of the Kremlin Garden is compared with Stavrovsky’s drawing of 1870 and contemporary accounts. These sources reveal the sequence of the garden’s sections and the role of the Trinity Bridge. Researchers have found no imperial decree establishing the garden, but an archival report dated 3 August 1820 and published by Komolova confirms an order to create a promenade along the Kremlin wall; the first section opened the following year.

Why is Alexander Garden divided into three sections?

The roads crossing the Neglinnaya River became the boundaries between the three sections. Walking from the Resurrection Gate towards the Moskva River, the Upper Garden extended as far as the Trinity Bridge, the Middle Garden continued from there to the approach to the Borovitsky Gates, and the Lower Garden lay beyond, by the river. This division is also recorded in an 1824 guidebook cited in a study by the Moscow Kremlin Museums, and in the state historical and cultural assessment of the site.

The key points in this layout were the fortress gates and the crossings over the Neglinnaya River’s former course. The bridges ran across the strip of land that would become the garden, connecting the grounds behind the wall with the city, while the garden paths ran alongside the wall. A traveller heading from north to south therefore encountered boundaries formed by older crossing routes, rather than arbitrary divisions between planted areas.

The names ‘First’, ‘Second’ and ‘Third’ Gardens appear in nineteenth-century documents alongside the familiar Upper, Middle and Lower Gardens. Both sets of names describe the same sequence. Their differing sizes matter too: an account from 1845 calls the third section, near the Borovitsky Gates, a small garden. It would be mistaken to imagine all three sections as equal in length or identical in layout.

Why did the Neglinnaya determine where the garden was built?

The layout of Alexander Garden took account of the course of the Neglinnaya River along the western side of the Kremlin. Once the river was diverted underground, a strip of land became available for a new public space, while the existing routes across the river remained. The city portal “Discover Moscow” links the transformation of this riverbank to Moscow’s reconstruction after the fire and the creation of the Kremlin Garden along the wall.

Bridges across the Neglinnaya River led to the Troitskaya and Borovitskaya Gates. When avenues were laid out along the Kremlin wall, the existing approaches were preserved. Two cross paths cut through the promenade at points that became the boundaries between the garden’s three sections.

Sources differ on when the work on the Neglinnaya River was completed. Moscow’s state historical and cultural heritage assessment documents give 1817–1819 as the period when the river was enclosed in a culvert. Komolova cites evidence that a watercourse and moat still ran beside the wall in 1820, and considers that year the most likely date for the garden’s creation. These accounts do not establish a single, undisputed date when the entire riverbank became a finished avenue: work on different sections, and the descriptions of it, may reflect different stages of the transformation.

Was a garden the only possible use for the banks of the Neglinnaya?

No: another plan to transform the riverbank existed before the Kremlin Garden was laid out. In the late 18th century, the engineer I. Gerard proposed turning the course of the Neglinnaya River into a series of canals and geometrically shaped pools lined with trees. The historical and cultural heritage assessment cites a surviving plan from 1790 and notes that the proposal was only partly carried out.

This drawing reveals a different approach to water. In Gerard’s plan, the river remained a visible part of the formal design. When the riverbank was laid out in the 1820s, the space beside the Kremlin wall took shape after the Neglinnaya River had been diverted underground. The documents show no direct link between the two plans.

The expert assessment records another detail of Gerard’s plan: water intake basins for the Mytishchi water supply were proposed along the chain of canals. The project linked improvements to the riverbank with the city’s water supply. In the 1820s, promenades were laid out by the Kremlin wall above the river, which had been enclosed in a culvert. Comparing the two shows different approaches to the same stretch of riverbank; the assessment does not say that Gerard’s scheme was explicitly rejected.

How did Troitsky Bridge divide the Upper and Middle Gardens?

Trinity Bridge crossed the site of the future avenues between the Trinity and Kutafya Towers. It marked the southern edge of the Upper Garden and the northern edge of the Middle Garden, but did not completely interrupt the walking route. On an early plan, the first and second gardens are connected by a long arch beneath the bridge; the similar arrangement of paths on either side underlines their intended unity as a composition.

The crossing predates the tree-lined avenues by about three centuries. According to the Moscow Kremlin Museums, a stone crossing from the Trinity Tower over the Neglinnaya River was built in 1516, and the Kutafya Tower was erected beyond it. In the 19th century, the designers of the promenades inherited an existing link between the city bank and the Kremlin gates. This difference in age helps explain the layout: the existing bridge limited where the avenues could run.

The connection between the two sections was carefully planned on several levels. Drawings held by the Moscow Kremlin Museums show ramps and steps leading from Trinity Bridge to the avenues, with an arched passage beneath the bridge. Visitors could enter from bridge level or continue along the lower path beside the wall. Komolova dates the construction of the ramps to 1821 and notes that they were dismantled during the bridge’s restoration in 1901. The present-day connection to the avenues should therefore not be assumed to reflect the 19th-century plan without checking.

An 1845 description provides more detail about the crossing: on the side of the second garden, beneath the arch, stood a sundial and two cast-iron staircases leading to a side landing on Trinity Bridge.

Museum drawings show a portico with four pairs of coupled Doric columns framing the passage. Visitors could walk along the lower avenue from the first garden to the second, while the route to the fortress gates continued above.

In 1901, the Trinity Bridge was rebuilt and the ramps dating from 1821 were dismantled. Drawings from 1829–1836 record the access routes that have since disappeared. The approach to the Trinity Gate followed the course of the old road, but the connections to the garden were altered.

How did the Lower Garden near the Borovitsky Gate come into being?

The Lower Garden began beyond the second cross path, near the Borovitsky Gate, and extended to the bank of the Moskva River. Its position reflects the same principle as the boundary between the Upper and Middle Gardens: an old approach road crossed the riverside strip. The historical and cultural assessment explicitly links the division into three sections to the surviving river bridges leading from the Trinity and Borovitsky Gates.

The sources do not, however, establish that every present-day path in the Lower Garden formed part of the original design. For this question, the established layout matters more: the first section ran to the Trinity Bridge, the second to the Borovitsky approach, and the third to the Moskva River. Planting, structures and access changed over the decades.

Records of the Lower Garden are scarce compared with those concerning the grotto and the Trinity Bridge, so it is especially useful to read the documents closely. A model of the Kremlin published in 1845 mentions ruins in the third small garden near the Borovitsky Gate. These were an artificial garden feature. It would be a mistake to call them the remains of an ancient wall on the strength of the word ‘ruins’ alone: the source describes a feature of garden design, not an archaeological discovery.

An 1874 drawing included in Komolova’s survey of the museum collection shows a plan and cross-section of a latrine with a waste pit between the Borovitskaya and Vodovzvodnaya Towers. The document confirms that service structures were planned for the southern section. A single drawing cannot establish when they were built; the Lower Garden’s original layout is less well documented than that of the Upper Garden.

When did the three-part layout take shape?

The three-part layout dates from the early history of the Kremlin Garden. Komolova cites an archival report: on 3 August 1820, Moscow’s military governor-general, D. V. Golitsyn, conveyed Alexander I’s order to the Commission for Buildings to create a promenade between the Voskresensky and Borovitsky Bridges and onwards to the embankment. This document firmly dates the start of work to 1820, although researchers have found no separate imperial decree establishing the garden. Komolova described a general plan from the 1820s–1830s and architect P. A. Stavrovsky’s 1870 ‘Plan of the Three Kremlin Gardens’. The first shows a proposed strip of land from the Corner Arsenal Tower to the Moskva River embankment and makes the connection between the first two sections beneath Troitsky Bridge particularly clear; the second shows all three sections at a later stage.

Museum publications date Dranitsyn’s plan differently: a survey of the drawings places it in the 1820s–1830s, while the caption to the plan in another work by Komolova gives 1828–1830s. Stavrovsky’s plan dates from 1870. The earlier image therefore cannot be treated as an exact record of the avenues on the garden’s opening day in 1821, nor can the later plan be taken as Bove’s original design preserved unchanged. Their value as evidence lies elsewhere: they show that the routes crossing the garden towards the gates remained in the same positions even as paths and structures changed. The difference in dating becomes apparent when comparing the survey of the museum drawings And the study of events in the garden.

Contemporary writer P. A. Ivanov dated the opening of the first section, from the Voskresensky Gates to the Troitsky Gates, to 30 August 1821. His account was published on 1 September that year and is recounted in Komolova’s work. A museum publication adds that the ceremonial opening took place on Alexander I’s name day, the tsar’s feast day in the church calendar. This account concerns the first section and does not establish that all three gardens had been completed in their later form by the time of the ceremony.

A guidebook published by Sergei Glinka in 1824 already describes the three gardens in sequence. It offers valuable evidence of how contemporaries named and understood the space soon after its creation. But a guidebook is not a record of construction: it helps establish how the gardens had come to be divided, without replacing lost or as yet undiscovered documents on the sequence of the work.

In the 1824 text quoted by Komolova, the link between the first and second of the three sections is called ‘Borovitsky Bridge’. Their relative positions indicate a crossing by the Troitsky Gates, as the plans also confirm. The reason for the discrepancy cannot be established without checking a copy of the original edition. Therefore the 1824 guidebook confirms the early division into three gardens, but the name given to the crossing in that passage should not simply be transferred to the plan.

A state historical and cultural assessment dates the creation of the garden to 1820–1823 and states that it was known as the Kremlin Garden until 1856. Golitsyn’s report, the opening of the first section and the guidebook record different stages; none establishes the exact date when all three sections were completed.

Ivanov’s account of the 1821 ceremony needs some qualification. That evening, visitors were admitted only to the first garden, not to a completed three-part ensemble. According to a correspondent for Otechestvennye Zapiski, members of the nobility and merchant class were inside the enclosure, while the rest of the public stood outside. This account describes a particular ceremony; it cannot be taken as evidence of a lasting rule of access over the following decades. It does show, however, that ‘open to all’ is a poor description of the opening evening itself.

Ivanov described the illuminated avenues and paths, the grotto by the wall and the Manege opposite the garden. The festivities drew on more than the new planting: the fortifications and the neighbouring building became part of the overall arrangement of lights. The account’s value to researchers lies not in its estimate of the crowd, which the correspondent could not have verified precisely, but in how clearly it places the celebration in the first section and identifies its visible landmarks. A museum study quotes and compares the text of the newspaper account.

The garden acquired the name Alexander Garden later. Komolova links its adoption to the period after Alexander II’s coronation in 1856 and to the memory of Alexander I. For early plans and descriptions, ‘Kremlin Garden’ is the appropriate name. The change of name does not in itself indicate a new layout in three parts: the three gardens were already listed in order in an 1824 guidebook. The name and the boundaries of this place have separate histories.

Who designed the garden, and why can it not be attributed to a single architect?

Osip Ivanovich Bove oversaw the work and designed individual architectural features, but the history of the three gardens cannot be reduced to a single architect’s drawing. The official assessment confirms his leading role; Komolova lists the architects involved in the later development and alteration of the grounds. This distinction matters: the overall plan conceived after the fire, the design of the entrances and bridge approaches, and the rebuilding of the late nineteenth century were separate decisions.

The northern entrance from Voskresenskaya Square was marked by a cast-iron fence designed by Evgeny Pascal. The drawings studied by Komolova include elevations of the main gates and side passages. They show that the northern approach to the gardens was conceived as a formal entrance, rather than an incidental opening in the fence. Near Troitsky Bridge, plans from 1829–1836 record a different arrangement of the route between the city, the bridge and the avenues.

On museum drawings of the gates from the mid-19th century, the side passages bear the monogram of Alexander I; a separate entrance opposite Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street faced the Arsenal Tower. The avenues could therefore also be reached from the city between the ends of the long strip of gardens.

Stavrovsky’s plan of 1870 and the 1883 drawing of the steps into the Middle Garden belong to a later chapter in the history of the established ensemble. In 1883, under the direction of architect N. P. Smirnov, the railings were repaired, the plinths replaced and the pavements raised; a new flight of steps was also built from the second garden. These works do not explain how the three sections came into being, but they are a reminder that the visible change in level and the position of the entrance may reflect later repairs rather than the original layout.

The making of the main iron fence also involved someone whose contribution is documented alongside that of its designer. A guidebook cited by Komolova names Alexander Vasilyevich Nemchinov: he cast the fence to the supplied design and gilded some of its details at his own expense. This does not make him the author of the garden’s layout, but it shows why an account of the ensemble should distinguish between the architect’s design, the metalwork and later replacements. According to the expert report, the present fence along Manezhnaya Street was made in 1934.

The drawings of the ramps leading from Troitsky Bridge into both gardens, dated 1829–1836, Komolova associates with M. V. Tavrovsky and F. M. Shestakov; on one of the sheets, Shestakov’s involvement is marked with a question mark. She does not identify who designed the original layout of all the avenues.

How did the different parts of the garden appear to a 19th-century visitor?

The Upper Garden was more than a path along the wall. It had a grotto designed by Beauvais and a coffee house near Troitsky Bridge; the Middle Garden had its own walkways and later hosted a plant exhibition; and descriptions of the third, smaller section near the Borovitsky Gate mention artificial ruins. These details show how, as it developed, this continuous linear space acquired different points of interest.

The grotto is a useful landmark for understanding the plan: it stands in the Upper Garden by the Middle Arsenal Tower, before Troitsky Bridge when approaching from the northern entrance. The Moscow Kremlin Museums describe it as an early 19th-century pavilion, with its rear built into an artificial hill on the site of former earthwork bastions. Even here, then, the design drew on the earlier landscape, as well as the bank of the Neglinnaya River.

The coffee house stood in the Upper Garden near Troitsky Bridge. Komolova reproduces a drawing dated 1829–1836: the single-storey gallery had rest rooms and a buffet. An earlier plan labels the same site as a stone building leased to the merchant Lopasheva; in the second half of the 19th century, the gallery was generally called a coffee house. Comparing the labels makes clear that they refer to one building, not two.

An 1870 plan marks an exhibition of plants from the Palace Winter Garden in the second garden. This detail belongs to a particular moment; it does not mean that exhibitions were a permanent feature of the Middle Garden throughout the 19th century. It does, however, challenge the simplified notion that the most significant attractions were always confined to the formal Upper Garden: garden life extended beyond Troitsky Bridge too.

The temporary use of the grounds in 1872 also changed access arrangements. The organisers created six entrances, but on the day of the ceremonial opening, 30 May, all except the Voskresensky entrance were closed. This detail from Komolova’s study concerns the ceremony, by which time pavilions already stood throughout the grounds; it does not describe everyday access in the 1820s or after the exhibition. The layout of the exhibition should be checked against the 1872 plan, not inferred from the arrangements for a single festive day.

The 1872 Polytechnic Exhibition helps convey the scale of the grounds after they were first laid out. As shown by Komolova’s research into events in the garden, the organisers initially considered the Middle Garden and the Manege, then occupied the first and second gardens. By the time the exhibition opened, they had also brought the third garden, the embankment and sites within the Kremlin into use. A photograph of a pavilion alone therefore cannot establish which of the three garden sections it stood in: a plan of the entire exhibition is needed.

Troitsky Bridge remained an important focal point in this temporary exhibition. A circular rotunda was built on it in time for the opening. Clergy taking part in the prayer service, along with selected invited guests, reached it by a ramp from the First Garden. This shows that the bridge was more than a historic boundary: it connected different levels and channelled movement even when the entire site was being used for a major city event. The rotunda of 1872 should not be treated as part of the original design of the 1820s.

Komolova reports that the temporary structures caused considerable damage to the grounds used for strolling. After the exhibition, a site beside the Kremlin wall was considered for the future Polytechnic Museum, but the museum ultimately opened on Lubyanskaya Square. For the history of the site’s layout, the limits of this change matter: the three sections could serve as exhibition grounds for a time, but the permanent, large museum building was constructed elsewhere. This helps distinguish the site’s temporary use from its enduring place in the city.

What did archaeology at the grotto reveal about the creation of the riverbank?

Excavations revealed how the artificial mound in the Upper Garden was built. During the 2004 restoration, archaeologist T. D. Panova examined the area between the grotto and the wall near the Middle Arsenal Tower. Her publication describes the soil used to create the mound between 1820 and 1823; its findings cannot be applied to the entire former bank of the Neglinnaya River.

In the backfill behind the grotto’s load-bearing structures, archaeologists found mixed humus containing pottery from the 14th to 18th centuries. Panova explains that soil had been brought in from long-inhabited parts of the city: objects older than the garden ended up in 19th-century construction fill. The age of a find here cannot automatically be taken as the age of the garden layer. It was the presence of pottery from different centuries throughout the full depth of the fill that led the researcher to conclude that the soil had been moved, rather than left undisturbed in place since the Middle Ages.

Above this backfill lay later deposits dating from the mid-19th to the 20th century. In the central part of the hill, they reached a depth of approximately 1.8–2 metres; Panova attributes them primarily to repairs to the wall and towers and to soil added to the upper platform. This provides physical evidence that the terrain around the grotto continued to change after the garden opened. A drawing from the first half of the 19th century and the present-day surface may show the same place, but with different elevations and contours.

In the northern excavation, Panova recorded a damp lower humus layer with patches of black-green silt and water-worn stones. She suggested that earth for the mound had been taken from a nearby stretch of the Neglinnaya River bank. This is a hypothesis about the origin of the backfill, rather than the trace of a former river channel found beneath the grotto. The publication explicitly states that the 2004 excavations did not reach the undisturbed natural deposits of the river bank. Archaeology therefore sheds light on how the grotto was built and how the surrounding terrain was altered, but it cannot replace the old plan when reconstructing the river’s entire course.

Stone from another building was reused in the construction of the pavilion. According to the restorers’ findings cited by Komolova, 43 fragments in the grotto’s decoration came from the Kremlin Arsenal, including vases, capitals and pieces with plant motifs. The Arsenal was damaged in 1812; these finds establish the specific origin of part of the facing. They do not prove that the entire structure was built from the remains of Moscow houses destroyed by fire: the pavilion had its own load-bearing structures and an artificial earthen foundation.

Excavations in 2004 uncovered the remains of a path paved with white stone behind the grotto, with brick drainage channels along its edges. It led to the upper viewing platform; according to the Moscow Kremlin Museums’ report, the path was only partially restored during landscaping. Alongside the drawings of ramps, the find provides another local example of how access between levels was arranged. It relates specifically to the grotto hill, however, and tells us nothing about the surfaces of all the garden’s paths.

What features of the original layout can still be identified on site?

On the ground, you can trace the position of the Kremlin’s western wall, the Trinity and Kutafya Towers, the Trinity Bridge and the approach to the Borovitsky Gate. These landmarks explain two boundaries of the long, narrow garden. Early plans show a passage beneath the Trinity Bridge, although the access steps to it were later altered.

The grotto also survives as a historical landmark, but it cannot be regarded as an untouched example from the 1820s. According to the Kremlin Museums, the pavilion was restored in the 1930s and in 1958–1959; in 2004, its structure was reinforced and a number of details were restored. Researchers can confidently identify the structure’s location and historical role while distinguishing Bove’s original design from the results of later restorations.

The fence on the Manege side does not reproduce the nineteenth-century design in every detail: according to Komolova, it was cast in 1934 as a simplified version of the earlier fence. The side gate opposite Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street was dismantled in the 1930s. Museum drawings are needed to understand the original entrance: the present-day railings show only one of the later designs.

Why did the garden’s outer boundary change too?

Even after the bridges had defined the three sections, the garden’s edge facing the city remained a subject of decisions and disputes. Komolova cites documents from the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts concerning a request by the city administration to use a strip of land along the First Garden to widen the road. The ensemble therefore had not only a lengthwise axis beside the wall and two crosswise boundaries marked by bridges, but also an outer edge whose position depended on carriage traffic, the layout of pavements and the rules governing use of the land.

In 1883, the city authorities petitioned for a strip of land between one and a half and two and a half sazhens wide behind the Manege. An inspection found that in places no more than an arshin separated the pavement from the horse-drawn tram tracks; carriages drove onto the tracks, obstructing traffic. The petition was refused at the time. These details from the archival case described by Komolova explain the practical reason for the dispute: the busy street and the garden fence stood uncomfortably close together. The issue was not a proposal to redraw the three historic sections.

In 1888, Moscow’s mayor, N. A. Alekseyev, raised the matter again. Correspondence over the right to use the adjoining land continued until 1890; the city clarified that it sought access for passage, not ownership of the garden. Even without a definitive change to the boundary, the case is important for interpreting later plans: the line of the fence, the width of the pavement and the position of the entrances were shaped by practical decisions made in the nineteenth century. They should not be taken as fixed elements of Bove’s original design.

When comparing the sources, it helps to keep three scales in mind. Dranitsyn’s plan shows the proposed layout of the entire strip of land; drawings of the ramps, fence and staircases record individual decisions made in particular decades; and the archaeological study of the grotto describes the ground only in a small area near the Middle Arsenal Tower. None of these sources, on its own, depicts the whole garden at a single point in time. Together, they explain how the three-part layout came about and make clear which details were later altered or remain too poorly documented to establish.

What can the sources not establish?

The document dated 3 August 1820 confirms the order to lay out the garden, but does not record the simultaneous opening of all three sections; nor does the opening of the first section in 1821 mark the completion of the ensemble. The entire present-day network of paths cannot be attributed to Bove, either. Between the early drawing, the plan of 1870, the works of 1883 and the dismantling of the bridge ramps in 1901, the grounds underwent many changes.

Comparing the sources leads to a more precise and useful conclusion. Channeling the Neglinnaya River underground created space for the garden; the old crossings to the Trinity and Borovitsky Gates established its boundaries across the site; and the architects connected its sections with paths, steps and a shared network of walking routes. The three names therefore reflect the real history of the urban landscape, but they do not, in themselves, prove that every feature seen today dates from the first opening.

The easiest way to understand this layout is to walk along the western wall and note where the old routes meet it. On the «Heart of the capital» route, the bureau takes you through Alexander Garden: afterwards, you can relate its paths and Trinity Bridge to the former course of the Neglinnaya River, without mistaking today’s landscaping for an exact reproduction of the nineteenth-century plan.

Sources

1. A. A. Komolova. Alexander Garden in contemporary accounts and graphic materials from the collection of the Moscow Kremlin Museums
2. A. A. Komolova. Ceremonial Events in Alexander Garden (1821–1914)
3. Moscow City Government. State Historical and Cultural Expert Assessment Report: Information on Alexander Garden
4. Discover Moscow. Moscow under Alexander I
5. Moscow Kremlin Museums. The Architectural Ensemble of the Moscow Kremlin: Towers
6. Moscow Kremlin Museums. The Grotto Garden Pavilion
7. A. A. Komolova. On the Opening Ceremony of the Kremlin (Alexander) Garden in 1821
8. T. D. Panova. Archaeology of the Site of the Grotto, a Monument of Garden and Park Architecture in Alexander Garden