Until the 19th century there existed a moat filled with water instead of the present-day garden. In 1866 Tallinn city rented the territory of today’s garden to the Kanuti Guild in order to establish a public summer garden there. The greenery has since been called the Kanuti Garden. Many itinerant circuses stopped there at the end of the 19th century when visiting Tallinn, later on, between the two World Wars, a fun fair, and bicycle rental operated there. Since 1913 cinema called „Grand Marina” (later „Ars”) operated where today’s Centre of the Russian Culture is located. At the time of opening it was the biggest cinema in the Russian Tsar empire. After the World War II a new Navy Officers House of Stalinist style was erected (completed in 1953) on the remains of the burned Grand Marina and the park got a new neoclassical look, which was typical for that period. After Estonia regained independence the building was renamed to become the Centre of the Russian Culture and the park underwent changes again. In 2002 a monument for F. Dostoevsky (by a sculptor Valeri Jevdokimov) was installed in the park. 2008 saw an opening of a fountain with Mare Mikof’s sculpture „Boys with umbrella”. There were 25 species of ligneous plants together with different sorts of lilac growing in Kanuti Park in autumn 2007.