City park

The centrally located Stephan cel Mare Park, formerly known as the Pushkin Park, is Chişinău’s oldest green area. Even today, the park invites you to stroll, with its fountains, sculptures and landscaped paths.

The park is also known as the “Park of Lovers”: for generations it has been a popular meeting place for couples, as Polina Leibovich, born in Chişinău in 1924, recalled in her Centropa interview:

Young people went for walks in the town park where there was a monument of Stefan the Great. I liked going to this park to sit on a bench with a book and then I secretly watched the enamored couples.

For the composer Zlata Tkach, born in Chişinău in 1928, the city park on Alexandrovskaja was where she met her husband Yefim after the war:

I met my husband when I was a third-year student, in 1949. In the summer the local Philharmonic orchestra played symphonic concerts in the park. The musicians were very popular, and we, students never missed one of their concerts. I paid attention to one guy during a concert. He was different and had such a spiritual face, when the orchestra played Mozart. I liked him and he also paid attention to me. His name was Yefim Tkach and he studied in the flute class at the Conservatory. […]
Yefim and I got married two years after we met. My husband and I lived for 52 years together. I think I’m a happy woman who had a happy family life. I married for love, we lived in harmony and we were united by our profession, by music.