Klin · RU

Mushroom-Girl Fountain (Devochka-Gribnitsa)

On a traffic-calmed square in Klin's historic centre, a barefoot cast-iron girl stands ankle-deep in a ring of water jets, wringing out the hem of her dress. This is the Mushroom-Girl Fountain (Фонтан «Девочка-грибница»), the unofficial emblem of Klin and one of the most recognisable small monuments in the Moscow region. Tucked among the old Trading Rows at Ulitsa Lenina 13, it is the spot locals point visitors to first — a compact, endlessly photographed landmark that packs more than a century of art history into a single figure. The sculpture itself is the reason to stop. The figure was modelled by the Russian artist Fyodor Kamensky and cast in iron at the famous Kasli foundry in the Urals; shown at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris, it earned Kamensky a large silver medal. Yet the girl's pose — bending, squeezing water from her skirt — grew out of a sad local story, and the monument has survived revolution, a spell at the bottom of a pond, a theft and an almost-meltdown at a scrap yard. What you see splashing in the basin today is a faithful copy; the fragile original rests indoors in the town museum.