As a mat­ter of fact, the Her­mitage Gar­den was not always the way we are used to see­ing it. It was even locat­ed in a dif­fer­ent place: from 1830, almost until the very end of the 19th cen­tu­ry, it was locat­ed on Bozhe­do­m­ka and was the first plea­sure gar­den in Moscow, with gaze­bos, flower beds, a the­ater, stage, cof­fee hous­es and pavil­ions. It reached its great­est pros­per­i­ty in the era when it belonged to the famous entre­pre­neur, for­mer actor of the Maly The­ater M. V. Lentovsky. K. S. Stanislavsky recalled the Her­mitage gar­den at that time: “There was noth­ing in this gar­den: boat­ing on the pond and water fire­works of incred­i­ble rich­ness and vari­ety with the bat­tle of armadil­los and drown­ing them, walk­ing on a tightrope across the pond, water hol­i­days with gon­do­las, illu­mi­nat­ed boats, bathing nymphs in the pond, bal­let on the shore and in the water. Pro­ces­sions of a mil­i­tary band, gyp­sy choirs, Russ­ian song­writ­ers. All of Moscow and for­eign­ers vis­it­ing it vis­it­ed the famous gar­den.”