Monument to the Conquerors of Space

The 107-metre obelisk by the southern entrance to VDNKh was unveiled in 1964, on the seventh anniversary of the launch of the first satellite. Its authors were the architects Mikhail Barshch and Alexander Kolchin and the sculptor Andrei Faidysh-Krandievsky; the competition for the monument was announced immediately after the Sputnik flight, and the winning entry showed a rocket climbing along a steep parabola. The exhaust plume of the launching rocket is treated as a giant curved pylon clad in polished titanium panels: the metal catches the light and changes shade depending on the weather and the time of day. At the foot stand bronze reliefs with designers, scientists and workers, and lines of verse are carved into the stylobate. Since 1981 the Museum of Cosmonautics has been working inside the base, its entrance hidden beneath the monument. In front of the obelisk begins the Alley of Cosmonauts with busts of Korolev, Gagarin and other participants in the programme. From below the structure reads especially sharply: the parabola is almost impossible to fit into a single frame.

On the map