Almost two decades after the end of the Soviet era, nostalgia continues to exude its heady fragrance. The latest major example is the Kremlin in Izmailovo, which opened two years ago after almost seven years of construction.
Initially, however, this plot of land in the Izmailovo district, to the east of central Moscow, was to be the site of the fifth hotel in the complex inherited from the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games. Another idea finally emerged, in the wake of the Vernisage d'Izmaïlovo, "the largest craft centre in Europe" located just next door, on a 19-hectare site now home to nearly 2,000 vendors. It's a slightly mad project, in fact: to build a miniature mirror of eternal Russia, in a version that seems to have been frozen forever in the century of Peter the Great.
Kitsch is obviously a word that immediately springs to mind when one is faced with the festival of bulbs and crenellated turrets of this strange ensemble. Everyone will keep their aesthetic opinions to themselves, but everyone will agree on the immense ambition of a project where, in a deliberate echo of a former residence of the Tsar who once lived nearby, the "largest wooden church in Moscow", a "bride and groom's palace", a museum of vodka and another dedicated to wedding clothes, a small hotel with 8 rooms/4 flats and a host of workshops and craft souvenir shops all stand side by side...
Incentive star
The inventory is still incomplete, as the fortress remains a work in progress, with perhaps the most impressive work still to come, with a large exhibition centre in a more contemporary style scheduled for 2010. "We are planning to install a more contemporary shopping centre in place of the Vernisage stalls, but several options are still being studied," says Marina Alekseeva, who, with her husband, presides over the fortress's destiny.
Of course, the Ismailovo Kremlin is set to become an incentive star, with participating groups promised to "feel like real Russians in eight days". With basic language training, folklore shows, gastronomic demonstrations, craft sessions and tutti quanti.
But the venue is also beginning to make a name for itself among organisers of receptions and meetings, for whom the catalogue of venues outside hotels is not yet very extensive in Moscow. All the more so as the venue boasts an interesting range of facilities, from a spacious lounge for small meetings to a large ballroom for large-scale parties. And there's always the added bonus of a touch of folklore. n
