The Easter Gift festival will kick off in the city centre and parks, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported at a Moscow Government Presidium meeting.
“On 12 April, tomorrow, the Easter Gift festival will kick off,” he said.
The festival will last until 23 April, Head of the Department of Trade and Services Alexei Nemeryuk said. According to him, over 340 applications for participation were submitted by business owners, more than 180 of which were approved.
In total, 143 commercial enterprises, including 25 related to Orthodox churches and monasteries and charity organisations, will operate at festival venues.
According to Mr Nemeryuk, as part of the festival, the Bell Factory foundry will open in Pushkin Square, where visitors will see the work of foundry masters. “Everyone will have a unique opportunity to watch masters of foundry making bells. In total, we plan to cast 14 bells during the festival,” he said.
“Restaurateurs have also prepared an interesting menu. The festival’s cuisine is divided into two parts. One part is fasting, which ends 16 April. Between 12 and 15 April, the offerings will include 250 fasting menu dishes, and between 16 and 23 April, it will include over 360 Easter dishes,” he said.
The Easter Gift festival will be held at 24 venues in the Moscow centre and in 19 city parks. It will open the spring series of the Moscow Seasons street event project.
Markets will offer 50 types of Easter cakes. Cheese and milk will be brought by farmers from the Moscow, Lipetsk, Smolensk, Ryazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Vladimir regions, and producers from the Volgograd, Kursk, Tambov, Saratov, Voronezh and Moscow regions will bring honey and other bee products.
The festival venues will be decorated with over 100 art objects, including 63 painted Easter eggs. The main decoration will be 10 model bells of Moscow churches. On Pushkin Square, at the Novopushkinsky public garden and on Tverskoi Boulevard, three-metre tall model bells of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral (The Great Festive and Sainted Bells), the Ivan the Great Bell Tower (the Bear, Reut, Korsunsky and Nemchin Bells), the Assumption Belfry of the Moscow Kremlin (the Seven Hundredth and the Great Assumption Bells), the Great Bell of St. Daniel’s Monastery and the Alarm Bell from the Armoury Chamber will be installed.
All festival sites will have children’s and sports zones: a climbing wall, a skate park, a fencing school and more.
The festival will also include concerts, plays, exhibitions, lectures, workshops and many other exciting events. In total, there will be 70 performances and concerts, 35 street scientific programmes, 30 tours and eight exhibitions. For example, a lecture on Moscow’s theatrical history will take place near the Pedagogical Book House store at 5/6 Kamergersky Pereulok, and an exhibition entitled, Moscow – the Centre of Intellectual Culture of the 18th-19thcenturies, will open near the monument to Karl Marx on Revolution Square. The Moscow Historical Quarters exhibition will kick off at the crossing to Manezh Square.
Tverskaya Square will host an Easter charity ball, and another four venues will feature concerts. Concerts will be held in Stoleshnikov Pereulok from 12 to 23 April and in Pushkin Square from 16 to 23 April. During weekends, concert venues will be open in Novy Arbat Street and Tverskaya Square. The music repertoire will include classics, folk music and retro songs in modern arrangements.
The festival programme will also include events under the City of Goodness charity project, including 15 special programmes for children from orphanages and boarding schools and 20 concerts and performances.
In particular, there will be concerts organised by the Joy of Good Deeds Foundation. Various entertainment and educational programmes will be presented by the following charity funds and organisations: the Russian Red Cross, AiF: Kind Heart, the Arkady Novikov Group’s charity fund, the Joy of Old Age, and more.
The All-Russian Society of the Blind, the Krug II theatre studio and the Theatre of the Simple-Minded will organise performances and concerts.
In total, 1,330 different events will be held. Revolution Square will offer lessons in courage, fencing classes, lectures and excursions held by military historical societies and Moscow museums, and Klimentovsky Pereulok will invite people to take part in cooking classes, workshops on making Easter dishes and the Moscow – the Centre of Gastronomy and Hospitality walking excursions.
A literary salon will open in Arbat Street, and workshops on decorating literary albums will be held. The garden square near the monument to Karl Marx will become a scientific and educational centre, where workshops on designing bridges, towers, flying machines and amphibious airmobiles will be held, as well as scientific lectures, excursions and mini-expeditions.
Everything you need to know about the Easter Gift festival – in a special project on mos.ru.