Valea Morilor Park: where the mammoths once lived

Exploring Chisinau could be even more attractive if you find a nice place to have a rest after a long walk around the places of interest throughout the whole capital. If this place is a splendid park that is situated almost in the center of the city, where the mammoths once lived, then you will like it even more. Valea Morilor Park is commonly known by the locals as the Komsomolsky Lake. This park is not only a fascinating place but also has quite interesting stories that will never leave you indifferent. Why? Let’s find out!

Valea Morilor Park

Valea Morilor Park, Strada Grigore Alexandrescu, Chișinău, Moldova

Backward look 

They say that Leonid Brezhnev, who in the 1950s was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldova, decided to create today's Valea Morilor Park as “The Central Park of Culture and Rest" named after the "Lenin Komsomol”. The project was entrusted to the chief architect of Chisinau Robert Kurtz, and in 1950, it was almost ready. The lake appeared two years later by dint of strenuous efforts of the local youth and members of the Komsomol. Just imagine: they worked without any special equipment, and the lake was practically dug manually only with the shovels! Impressing! After the Soviet period, when Moldova got the independence, the park was renamed to Valea Morilor, which means “The valley of mills”. In 2006, the lake was drained because of the dangerous chemicals that were detected inside it. This recovery lasted 5 years, thus in 2011, the lake was filled with water again. Nowadays, the laborious work has been executed to give the Valea Morilor Park a new look, refresh it and present it in a dignified manner, the way you may see it today.

Curious places in Valea Morilor Park

Being quite different from other city parks, Valea Morilor has gorgeous cascade stairs that were renovated in 2016, hereby brought up to the decent condition. Years ago, the vandals ruined the stairs and the fountains, but now they look even greater than before. Walking up and down the cascade stairs makes you feel as if you are somewhere in a fairy tale. A tiny gurgling waterfall on the side brings an added value to this feeling and takes your mind far away from reality. The majority of visitors throw the coins in the fountains to be sure that one day they will be back to admire the beauty of the park again.

In addition to the cascades, you can find the inconspicuous springs of clean drinking water here. The most known of them is called “Tamara’s spring”, that was done by a Siberian named Gennady. For twelve years in a row, almost every night after a hard day’s work, he came to the spring and, with his own hands, turned, dragged and laid out stones in the combinations that only he could explain. The master gave the name to the place “Tamara's spring”, in the memory of his sister who died during the childbirth. The other springs and sources could be found throughout the whole territory of the park. By the way, in the past, those springs saved many locals, when the accidents at chemical plants happened and polluted the tap water.

One more noteworthy place of Valea Morilor Park is the Summer Theater. It was constructed in 1957 and called “Green Theater”. Here even performed a great band “Machina vremeni” (Time travel machine) and a famous singer Alexander Rozembaum, currently a Russian artist. However, Vladimir Visotskiy, a Soviet theater and cinema actor, poet, novelist and singer held the most visited concert of that time in 1972. Currently, the Summer Theater is not so popular, but the green benches that are located all over the territory are so good-looking that they certainly won’t leave you indifferent. Precisely because of them, the theater was named “Green”.

Archaeological excavations of the ancient animals

In 2009,  Moldavian archaeologists discovered the fragments of a mammoth skeleton at the bottom of a former lake in Valea Morilor Park. This finding was very significant and quite rare for Moldova. The scientists assumed that our land had the favourable conditions for the large animals such as mastodons that disappeared 3 million years ago, the same as for their heirs, mammoths, who disappeared tens of thousands of years ago. The found bones belong to the female mammoth that existed during the Upper Pleistocene. The animal was one of the last representatives of this species living on the territory of our country. Even though the lake is filled with water, people still remember that this place was probably one of the oldest habitats of the mammoths. Unbelievable, isn’t it?

Komsomolsky Lake

Lacul „Valea Morilor”, Chișinău, Moldova

While exploring Chisinau never forget to visit the fascinating Valea Morilor Park that kept and carried its best things throughout the decades becoming even more significant to the locals. Here, you may not only walk and enjoy the beauty of the places but also get in touch with the history that is as real as the water in the springs and fountains. Be our guest in Chisinau, and visit one of the most incredible parks of the city, where the mammoths once lived.

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