Winter Fun: Mosaics in the Snow

Peizhazna Alley is almost always busy with playing children or visitors taking photographs.  I risked my life with my middle of January visit but it was my own very stupid fault.  I went on this

wearing this instead of Uggs so I'm very thankful for coming out intact.

The park/playground, most popularly known as Mosaic Park,  is not easy to find.  Let me help you with that.  If you're driving, just partk the car at around Velyka Zhytomirska 34, there's an Olsen shop round the corner, take the pathway behind the building that begins after you pass Olsen and there you have it, the beginning of a long, scenic walk all the way down to the corner of Volodymirska and Desyatynna vulitsa.  Or start from Volodymirska 2 and walk back.

The alley is surrounded by beautiful turn-of-the century (not the most recent one, obviously) deteriorating residental buildings and was built in the 1980s to create an overview of the Dniepro and Podil from the upper part of Kiev. 

In 2009 with the help of some apparently unknown sponsors,  the residents decided to cheer up and perhaps save the neighbourhood.  The Children's Landscape Park/Mosaic Park was opened.  Famous artists such as Constantine Skretutsky, most famous street sculptor of Kiev, Olga Kondratska and Lesya Kara Kostya participated in creating one of the most colourful landmarks of the capital.  Mosaic cats, benches that look like a bird and a hare, elephant-fountain and zebras and a 30 metre long cat-centipede later joined by The Little Prince, a gift from the French Institute and then the Alice in Wonderland Playground, too.

And beautiful murals on the walls.

Two years later seventeen more sculptures were added with the Kiev Fashion Park Project, one of them is this, the Four Manneken Pis.  I have heard theories about what it might symbolise but as it might or might not be political and is only hearsay as far as I can tell, you will not get juicy details from me.

In the middle of January this year the park saw an interesting addition in the form of a new playground with an interesting economic message for children to educate them about the importance of paying taxes, again, Skretutsky's project in part.  There is a bad world (shady economy) and a good world (fair economy) and to get from one to the other children have to cross a bridge, the Bridge of Justice over the Hryvnia River.  Many more additions are expected in the spring funded by the Central Bank of Ukraine. 

the spider of the bad world of Two Worlds

Due to the weather - all was covered by ice and snow, there was no way down to the lower part -  I could not explore the Kiev Fashion Park part of the alley but I will most definitely go back in the spring. 

In the meantime if you want to read more about the Two Worlds project, Day Kiev published an informative article about it a couple of weeks ago and here's a bit of an interview with Constantine Skretutsky, too.