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'A roughly painted, cheap fake' The restoration of Moscow's Stone Flower Fountain cost more than a billion rubles. Why?
1:57 pm, April 25, 2019 · Source: Meduza
In early April, photos of the newly renovated Stone Flower Fountain began popping up on social media. The Moscow landmark is one of four historic fountains located in the VDNKh exhibition park, and a total of almost three billion rubles ($46.3 million) were spent to restore all four. Local activists expressed frustration at the fountain's "coarse" new look, and restoration specialists advised the public to wait a few years for the elements to return the flower to a more natural-looking state. The company that renovated the fountain has won almost every major restoration contract in western Russia in recent years—and it has been involved in a string of corruption scandals. The company even offered to help the French government restore the Notre Dame cathedral.
The Stone Flower is one of VDNKh's most prominent fountains. It stands on Central Alley across from the Ukraine pavilion, and its central structure is a
