Alunelul Park

Nature · Chișinău and Surroundings

Alunelul was built in the early 1960s on 11 hectares of ground that once was a section of a Jewish cemetery. The Soviets relocated the remains they displaced for the park to a new burial ground, while leaving some of the old cemetery intact. The park contains a monument called the 1903 Pogrom Memorial that commemorates the dozens of victims of anti-Jewish riots in 1903 and 1905. The pogroms, which injured hundreds and forced thousands from their home, prompted many of Chisinau’s Jews to leave. Jews have begun returning to the city and elsewhere in Moldova since the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.