At the end of the Great Patriotic War, the USSR government decided to build 20 circuses in the country. The right to become the first one was granted to Minsk.
The construction was completed in 1958, and the circus was opened on February 11, 1959 with a program of the Belarusian circus team. At that time it was the largest and most beautiful circus in the USSR. When the opening took place, it was a real holiday. Everything just "boiled" with happiness. The acrobat Biryukov, in people’s present, climbed onto the roof of the circus, on the highest point of the dome, and made an incredible acrobatic stand there.
In 2011, a sculptural ensemble of four sculptures appeared by the Belarusian State Circus (author Sergey Bondarenko). In front of the circus itself, there is a six-meter column with a ballerina –horsewoman on the horse. It was planned to install the sculpture with the ballerina-horsewoman not on the column, but on the arch, closer to the intersection with Yanka Kupala Street. And at the colonnade of the building it was planned to place two clowns, inviting the audience to the performance. However, later it turned out that the arch couldn’t be installed there, there was a risk of damaging the communications of the metro. After long discussions, it was decided to install another sculpture there - a pyramid of animals, consisting of a turtle, a cat and an elephant. Initially, it was planned a little different. “This is an inverted pyramid in which everything is inside out,” explained the author, sculptor Sergey Bondarenko. - Initially, instead of a turtle I was going to sculpt a mouse. The idea was as follows: the elephant is afraid of this creature, so it becomes small from fear, and the mouse, feeling power over it, is big. Between them there is a cat for protection. But the circus workers said that they had some bad beliefs associated with a mouse, so its presence in the sculpture is highly undesirable. So the turtle appeared. ” It should be noted that circus artists are among the most superstitious people; where there is risk, there is always superstition. A little closer to the ticket office, you can see another sculptural group - "А сlown, a tiny pig and a giant rooster." Here everything is thought out in detail. Even the hands of the clock, which indicate five minutes before the beginning of the performance.
