Fili Culture and Leisure Park

About museum

On the territory of the present-day Fili-Kuntsevo Park, about two and a half thousand years ago a settlement of early humans was established. There is an archaeological and natural monument, the Kuntsevo settlement site, which occupies more than 1,300 sq. m. Today the place is known mainly to archaeologists, but it long ago acquired an ominous reputation. On an 1804 map of Moscow it is called the Tatar Cemetery, and among the people it was known as the Polish and Slavic Cemetery. On the site you can see small mounds covered with dark soil — the layered deposits of the settlement. Legend has it that a church collapsed there and sank fifty meters underground, and to this day the ringing of a bell can be heard there at night. In the 19th century the writer M. Voskresensky described this place in the novel "The Cursed Place." Nearby grew an oak — a giant that took four people to encircle, its age estimated at around a thousand years. It stood until the beginning of the 20th century, when it was struck by lightning and destroyed by fire.