Park Pobedy Na Poklonnoy Gore

This guide to Park Pobedy on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow opens in September 1812, when Napoleon's army reached this hill outside the city and waited for Russian officials to climb up and hand over the Kremlin's keys, the traditional gesture of surrender. It traces what Commander Kutuzov chose to do instead, and why Soviet planners returned to this same hilltop more than a century later. For centuries before Napoleon, travelers arriving from the west stopped on this same rise to bow toward the city below.