A park named after Anna Politkovskaya will appear in Milan

The authorities of Milan have decided to open the park named after Anna Politkovskaya, according to The New Times . The park will be located in one of the most prestigious areas of the city - in the vicinity of the Porta Garibaldi railway station.

In October, a park in the center of Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic was named after Politkovskaya, and on December 6, a similar decision was made by the government (junta) of Milan.

Architects with world fame are working on the construction of the park - Argentinean Cesar Pelli and Briton Nicholas Grimshaw. The park is expected to open in time for the Expo 2015 world exhibition: it will be held in Milan for six months, according to forecasts, 20 million guests from 150 countries will take part in it.

Adjacent to the Anna Politkovskaya Park is Gae Aulenti Square, the world-famous Milanese architect who passed away this fall. This Milanese square also received the name Aulenti just the other day.

“By dedicating the park to Anna Politkovskaya and the square to Gaia Aulenti, we kind of connect the memory of these two incredible women with the present and future of Milan,” Stefano Boeri, cultural adviser to the Milan government, told The New Times. “Both were distinguished by incredible tenacity and talent and devoted their lives to civic duty, both were devoted to freedom and democracy.”

Naming the park after the journalist was suggested by the association Annaviva (“Anna is alive”), created in 2008 with the aim of not only preserving the memory of Anna, but also protecting the values ​​for which she died in Russia and Eastern Europe.

“Over the past year, we have been to Moscow twice – during the elections to the State Duma in December 2011 and in March for the presidential elections,” Annaviva President Luca Bertoni told The New Times. - It was during the first trip that the idea was born to do something so that in Milan one of the public places was dedicated to the memory of Politkovskaya. On our return, we started collecting signatures on the blog of Rai journalist Andrea Riscassi for a petition to name a park after Anna. The petition was signed by 1700 people. We felt that the park on Corso Como, adjacent to the construction site of the Porta Nuova project, was the best place. After all, Expo 2015 will bring together people from all over the world. We will remind them all: Italy has always been on guard of freedom of speech, and therefore has preserved the memory of a woman who paid for this freedom with her life.