Why is this import running twice?

[extan1]

I'm new to python and am trying to migrate my flask app to a package structure.

I have run.py sitting in a directory alongside a /myproject directory.:

from myproject import app

if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

When I run python run.py, the debugger confirms that the import runs first on line 1 from myproject import app (as I would expect), and then again when app.run() is executed (as I would not expect). This is a problem because one of the imported modules declares a global object that is only allowed to be instantiated once..

/myproject contains the modules along with an __init__.py, which imports routes.py:

from flask import Flask
app = Flask(__name__)
from myproject import routes

I apologize if this should be obvious, but why is the import happening twice, and can it be prevented?