Every winter, for several decades, a cloud of steam rose in the heart of Moscow, near the Kremlin. Beneath this white veil, hundreds of swimmers moved outdoors, their heads above the warm water, while the cold bit all around. The scene almost resembled a collective hallucination, and yet it lasted for years. No one swam there by accident. The pool had become an urban ritual, a place where people came as much to swim as to observe this improbable spectacle. What few swimmers knew, or preferred to ignore, was that beneath their feet lay the skeleton of a titanic project, abandoned before it could even begin. The heated water literally covered the remains of an ambition meant to change the face of the Soviet capital. In the 1930s, the Soviet authorities envisioned an administrative and congress center of unprecedented scale, designed to visually impose itself on Moscow, not far from the Kremlin. The project was intended to become an administrative and congress center in Moscow, near the Kremlin, on the site of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which was demolished for this purpose. The building was not only meant to be large: it was intended to surpass all existing constructions on the planet. If it had been built, it would have become the tallest structure ever erected at that time. A colossal statue was to crown the entire structure, visible from much of the city, a crushing symbol of the new regime. The message was clear: nothing, neither religion nor the tsarist past, should rival the power of the Soviet regime. To clear the necessary space, the authorities made disappear a major religious building that occupied precisely the chosen location. The cathedral was razed, its foundations leveled, and the ground prepared to accommodate the colossal structure. The construction of the administrative skyscraper finally began in 1937, with the laying of the first foundations and a metal framework intended to support the entire structure. The construction began in 1937 and was interrupted by the German invasion. The war changed everything. The steel already mounted on site, though precious and rare, was disassembled piece by piece for use elsewhere. The steel framework was cut up and reused for Moscow's fortification system and to build railway bridges. The country needed metal to defend itself, not to erect symbols. The construction site would never resume. The foundation pit remained abandoned, gradually filling with infiltrated water. This gaping hole, once destined for greatness, became a submerged scar in the middle of the city. The emptiness lasted for many years. Then someone had the idea to repurpose this flooded excavation instead of filling it. The immense crater was transformed into an open-air heated pool, open all year round, including when snow covered the surrounding sidewalks. The foundations of the palace were repurposed into an open-air pool called the Moscow Pool, which would become the world's largest. Muscovites swam there in winter, in warm water surrounded by steam, at the exact spot where the tallest building in the world was supposed to rise. After the collapse of the USSR, the winds changed once again. The reconstruction of the cathedral became an act of spiritual and national rebirth. The religious building was resurrected identically, on the same ground that had once supported a temple, then an abandoned construction site, then a swimming pool. The cycle closed exactly where it had begun. But not everyone applauded this return to the past: not all Muscovites accepted this option so easily, and there were many opponents to the restoration of the temple, as the pool had become, for an entire generation, a piece of childhood and a winter place of freedom that had to be said goodbye to.