Shveytsariya Park — the largest park in Nizhny Novgorod, stretching three and a half kilometers along the high right bank of the Oka in Prioksky District, alongside Gagarin Avenue. Founded by gymnasium students in 1903, after renovation for the city's 800th anniversary it now covers 52 hectares of developed grounds with eighteen kilometers of pathways, fourteen children's playgrounds, and eleven sports courts.[1][2] In 2025 the park welcomed more than three and a half million visitors.[3]

The Origin of the Name

The picturesque high bank of the Oka, with its views over Zarechka, had already captivated locals in the 19th century. The name stuck on account of the resemblance to Alpine scenery: some well-traveled visitor remarked that the beauty of the place was reminiscent of Switzerland.[1]

In everyday speech, Nizhny Novgorod residents call the whole forest along the steep right bank of the Oka "Shveytsariya" — from the campus of UNN to the Molitovsky Descent. Officially, however, the park runs from the Tobolsk Barracks to the tram loop at Myza.

How the Park Was Planted

In the spring of 1903, gymnasium students together with their parents and teachers planted a thousand pine saplings here — and so a two-hectare woodland appeared on what was then a dacha outskirt of the city.[1] After the Revolution, the park was taken under the care of the Komsomol: a cinema, reading rooms, and recreation grounds all operated within it.[1]

In 1958, students continued planting along Arzamassky Highway — today's Gagarin Avenue — and the park was given the name of the Leninist Komsomol. The historical name "Shveytsariya" was restored in 1992.

Terrain and slopes

The park occupies a plateau along the bluff edge, a riverside terrace, and steep slopes cut through by large ravines — the Bolshoy Tobolsky, Maly Tobolsky, Kholodny, and Mezhevy. The slopes are partially terraced and planted with trees: tree-and-shrub plantings have been widely used to stabilize the soil, and stepped terraces have been constructed in the Tobolsky ravines.

The terrain is prone to landslides, and stability is maintained by anti-landslide structures — retaining walls, drainage adits, stormwater collectors along the ravine talwegs, catchment devices, and shallow pipe drains. A significant portion of the ravine slopes has been left in an almost natural state; the exception is the right slope of Kholodny Ravine, where terracing has created three berms with pathways and drainage gutters.

Trees and rare plants

The park is home to pines, oaks, birches, aspens, larches, chestnuts, red oak, Manchurian walnut, and Amur cork tree; some individual trees are up to a hundred and fifty years old.

Within the park's boundaries lies the Sluda — an area of centuries-old oak groves on the right bank slope of the Oka, where rare and protected plant species have been preserved.[1] The lady's slipper orchid (Cypripedium calceolus) and moonwort (Lunaria rediviva), both growing at Sluda, are listed in the International Red Book.

Mishutka Zoo

In 1997, a zoo opened in the park; it was later named Mishutka Zoo". By the end of the 2010s, it was home to around five hundred animals.

On May 29, 2018, Mayor Vladimir Panteleev announced the closure of the zoo, stating that the city was not equipped to properly maintain it; from June 1, 2018, Mishutka was closed to visitors, and the zoo was excluded from the park's reconstruction concept for the city's 800th anniversary. Some of the animals — a Himalayan bear, a Père David's deer, and mongooses — were to be transferred to Limpopo Zoo", with the rest to be sold to zoos in other regions. Animal welfare advocates gathered signatures against the closure.[4]

Improvements for the 800th anniversary

The reconstruction of Shveytsariya Park became the largest landscaping project in the city's history: the works covered more than 52 hectares and cost approximately four billion rubles, with the EKS group of companies serving as the contractor.[1][5][2] The first phase was completed in 2021, in time for Nizhny Novgorod's 800th anniversary; on 22 August 2021, the central part of the park opened in a test mode.

Engineering infrastructure was installed, the storm drainage system was repaired, exterior lighting was replaced — 828 light fixtures in all — and 155 CCTV cameras were installed; the three-kilometer fence and entrance groups, designed by architect Voronkov Vadim Vasilevich and recognized as heritage objects, were restored.[1] The park gained 18 kilometers of pathways, 14 children's playgrounds and 10 sports grounds, a one-kilometer circular running track, a four-kilometer scenic trail, 16 pavilions, 10 restrooms, two dog-walking areas, two fountains, a café, reading rooms, and a forty-meter panoramic bench.[1][2]

The trees sparked a separate controversy: the project was criticized for felling, and the prosecutor's office reviewed the documentation. Following the completion of the works, 1,632 trees and more than thirty thousand shrubs were planted.[1][2]

Second Phase and Litigation

The second phase was set to tackle the most challenging elements — the slopes and the bank of the Oka River: reconstruction of landslide-prevention systems, wastewater treatment facilities, restoration of staircases leading down to the river, and cycle paths. In 2023, approximately 83 million rubles were proposed for the design work, but the funds were never allocated, and by spring 2025 the construction department acknowledged that no funds had been earmarked for the second-phase design and no timeline had been set. The Region was counting on federal embankment improvement programs.[5]

The dispute over the design work went to court. On 19 June 2025, the Arbitration Court of Nizhny Novgorod Region terminated the municipal contract between the EKS group of companies and the city's capital construction authority: the client had been unable to obtain a state expert opinion due to a newly routed gas pipeline, and as early as 2022 had proposed terminating the contract by mutual agreement — but no agreement was signed because the authority refused to pay for work already completed. The court awarded the contractor 105.8 million rubles.[6]

The Park Today

Spread across 52 hectares, the park features 14 children's playgrounds, 11 sports courts, 18 kilometres of walking paths, 1,740 small architectural structures, and two musical fountain light shows.[3] In winter, an ice rink is set up — over 47,000 people visited it in a single season.[3] The ecological space "Ecotherium" hosted 263 classes for two and a half thousand participants over the course of a year, and around one and a half thousand trees, shrubs, and flowers were planted on the grounds.[3]

In 2025, the park welcomed more than three and a half million visitors — a record for parks in Nizhny Novgorod.[3] The results were reviewed at a City Duma session in April 2026.[3]

Who shapes the park

Since the early 2020s, the park's programming has been led by its art director — television journalist Skugarevskaya Yulia Vladimirovna. Her tenure brought features the park had never had before: a lantern alley, nighttime illumination, and the winter "Star Shveytsariya" — an ice rink with a model of the Earth at its centre, which made the park a destination in its own right come December.[7]

Also her initiative: the "Tsvetkov swings." For the "My Park — My Shveytsariya" competition, children from across the city submitted more than eight hundred drawings; the winning design came from nine-year-old Ilya Tsvetkov, who had seen panoramic swings in Moscow and wanted the same at home. The swings were built exactly to his drawing, placed on the slope overlooking the Oka River, and fitted with a plaque bearing the young author's name.[8]

Since 2021, the park has hosted the "Autumn in Shveytsariya" jazz festival, which Skugarevskaya conceived and leads: four times running it received support from the Presidential Foundation for Cultural Initiatives, and by 2026 had grown to its sixth edition.[9]

In 2024, the Association of Parks and Public Gardens named Shveytsariya the park of the year among major cities in the country.[10]

See also

Sources

  1. nizhny800.ru — Nizhny 800 — Shveytsariya Park: history and improvement works for the 800th anniversary
  2. aoeks.ru — EKS Group of Companies — Comprehensive landscaping of Shveytsariya Park, Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
  3. nn.aif.ru — Argumenty i Fakty — Nizhny Novgorod — Shveytsariya Park welcomed a record 3.5 million visitors in 2025 (archive)
  4. GIPERNN — The death of Mishutka Zoo: what will happen to the animals after Shveytsariya's reconstruction (archive)
  5. GIPERNN — Continuation of improvements in Shveytsariya Park remains in question (archive)
  6. nn.aif.ru — Argumenty i Fakty — Nizhny Novgorod — Contract for landscaping of Shveytsariya Park terminated by court (archive)
  7. Vremya N — Yulia Skugarevskaya — on preparations of Shveytsariya Park for the New Year holidays (archive)
  8. Administration of Nizhny Novgorod — Panoramic swings designed by a nine-year-old Nizhny Novgorod resident installed in Shveytsariya Park
  9. jazz.ru — Jazz.Ru — The jazz festival "Autumn in Switzerland" has begun in Nizhny Novgorod (archive)
  10. sobaka.ru — Sobaka.ru Nizhny Novgorod — "Shveytsariya" — park of the year 2024 (archive)
  11. pro-nn.org — Nizhny Novgorod. Shveytsariya Park (archive)