Moves under the Kremlin. Underground secrets of the Kremlin

The Moscow Kremlin cannot but attract increased attention. It is the largest surviving and active fortress in Europe. And like any fortress, the Kremlin keeps its secrets.

Why at this place?

People lived on Borovitsky Hill (where the Kremlin was later built) long before the founding of Moscow. Archaeologists have found on the territory of the Kremlin the sites of people who lived here in the Bronze Age, that is, the 2nd millennium BC. Near the Archangel Cathedral, sites from the Iron Age were also found, which may indicate that this place did not cease to be the center of life for a very long time. The Vyatichi, who settled here in the 10th century, obviously did not come out of nowhere. Here, in a conveniently located place at the intersection of two rivers (Moscow and Neglinnaya), there were parking lots and ritual structures. It is characteristic that in the pagan period Borovitsky Hill was called the Witch's Mountain, a temple was located here. It was on the site of the temple that the first Kremlin was founded. Borovitsky Hill was an ideal site for the construction of a border fortification, since both water and land routes converged here: land roads led towards Novgorod and Kyiv.

Caches and passages

In addition to the Kremlin, which is visible to everyone, there is another Kremlin - underground. The system of hiding places and secret passages in the Kremlin area was studied by many researchers. According to the research of the famous Russian archaeologist and researcher of "underground Moscow" Ignatius Stelletsky, underground structures under the buildings of the 16th-17th centuries located within the Garden Ring are connected to each other and to the Kremlin by a network of underground labyrinths. And initially the plan of the underground capital was created by the Italian architects of the Moscow Kremlin - Aristotle Fiorovanti, Pietro Antonio Solari and Aleviz Novy. In particular, Stelletsky wrote: “All three architects, as foreigners, could not leave Moscow and had to lay down their bones in it ...” The archaeologist discovered a well-coordinated system of 350 underground points, thanks to which, for example, it was possible to get from the Kremlin even to Sparrow Hills.

To Jerusalem

According to most people, the main tower of the Moscow Kremlin is Spasskaya, but is it really so? It is logical to assume that priority should belong to the tower that was built first. The first of the towers of the modern Kremlin was Taynitskaya, founded in 1485. For the first time in Russia, brick was used for fortification construction. This tower got its name from the secret passage leading from the tower to the Moscow River. For a long time, the Tainitskaya Tower was of great importance for Muscovites - on the feast of the Epiphany, the Jordan was cut through in front of it in the Moscow River. The royal exit to the Jordan was one of the most solemn ceremonies. Until 1674, there was a striking clock on the Taynitskaya Tower, it was from here that the bells were rung in case of fire, until 1917 a cannon was fired from the Taynitskaya Tower every day at noon. Why was the Taynitskaya Tower the first? This is due to the fact that the tower became the central one for the southern wall of the Kremlin, that is, it faced towards Jerusalem (because of this, the Jordan was cut through in front of it).

Leonardo?

It is well known that the Kremlin was built by the Italians. Their names are well known. One of the main architects was Pietro Antonio Solari. He came from a family of architects who worked in Milan with Leonardo da Vinci, worked with the great da Vinci and Antonio himself. Some historians, comparing historical evidence, do not even exclude the possibility that Leonardo personally participated in the construction of the Kremlin. The first to put forward this hypothesis in the late 80s of the twentieth century was the historian Oleg Ulyanov, who spent his whole life dealing with the history of the Kremlin. There is no direct evidence of this theory, but more and more indirect evidence is being found, starting with almost exact matches in the drawings of the Fleming with rare elements of the Kremlin walls, to "blank spots" in da Vinci's biography from 1499 to 1502. Dmitry Likhachev showed great interest in the version of "Leonardo's hand".

hanging gardens

Few people know, but for a long time real hanging gardens were located on the territory of the Moscow Kremlin. Already in the 17th century, there were two large and several small (indoor) riding gardens on the roofs and terraces of palaces. According to Tatyana Rodinova, an employee of the Moscow Kremlin Museum, hanging gardens were located on the roof of the now-defunct Embankment Chambers on an area of ​​​​2.2 thousand square meters. Here, not only fruits and nuts were grown, but also a pond with a mirror area of ​​200 square meters was arranged. In this place, the young Peter the Great received his first navigation skills. Since that time, even the names of those who were responsible for the "garden structure" have been preserved: Stepan Mushakov, Ivan Telyatevsky and Nazar Ivanov. Water for the hanging gardens came from the Vodovzvodnaya Tower, where a mechanism was installed to raise water from the Moskva River. From the well installed in the tower, water was supplied through lead pipes to the Kremlin itself.

Red or white?

The Kremlin was originally red, but in the 18th century it was whitewashed in the fashion of the time. Napoleon also saw him white. The French playwright Jacques-Francois Anselot was in Moscow in 1826. In his memoirs, he described the Kremlin as follows: "The white paint that hides the cracks gives the Kremlin an appearance of youth that does not correspond to its form and crosses out its past." The Kremlin was whitewashed for the holidays, the rest of the time it was, as they liked to say, covered with a "noble patina". An interesting metamorphosis happened to the Kremlin during the Great Patriotic War. In the summer of 1941, the commandant of the Kremlin, Major General Nikolai Spiridonov, proposed repainting all the walls and towers of the Kremlin - for camouflage. No sooner said than done. Academician Boris Iofan undertook the execution of the project: artificial streets were built on Red Square, walls of houses and black "window holes" were painted on the Kremlin walls. The mausoleum turned into a natural house with a gable roof. The Kremlin became red again after the war, in 1947. The decision was made personally by Stalin. In principle, it was logical: red flag, red walls, Red Square...©

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DOUBLE BOTTOM

The history of the Kremlin dungeons is one of Russia's best kept secrets. In tsarist times, treasuries and secret chambers, battle passages and intra-wall passages were arranged in the Kremlin under cathedrals and towers. The dungeons communicated with each other and had several exits to the surface of the earth. One existed in the basement of the Archangel Cathedral, the other - under the Borovitskaya Tower. It was rumored that the Senate Tower was the hatch to the underground Kremlin. In 1929, during the cleaning of debris from the underground part of the tower, a dungeon more than 6 meters deep was discovered under it. Many towers had double walls.

Beklemishevskaya Tower was used as a place of torture and imprisonment of prisoners. Boyar Ivan Beklemishev had his tongue cut out for impudent speeches and complaints against Grand Duke Vasily III. Accused of treason, they tortured Prince Khovansky. In the cellars of the Konstantin-Eleninskaya tower, the famous “Konstantinovsky dungeon”, the prison of the Investigative Order, was located, and in the outlet archery there was a torture chamber and the legendary “stone bags”. Inquiries were made there not only for robberies, but also for the illegal trade in wine and tobacco. The people called the tower simply - "Pytoshnaya" and they said that "few people could stand it for more than a day, while others lost their minds."

In the Tainitskaya tower there was a secret underground passage to the river to get water during the siege. In 1852, after a rainstorm, 4 underground chambers were opened in the washed-out pavement at the foot of the tower. Not far from the Spasskaya Tower in the 17th century, a hole was opened in the moat into a secret passage leading to an underground chamber under St. Basil's Cathedral, in the basement of which tramps were found who had entered there through an underground gallery.

In 1894, the archaeologist Prince N.S. Shcherbatov examined the first floor of the Nabatnaya Tower and found in it the entrance to the immured gallery running along the Kremlin wall. The researcher managed to find a secret passage, hiding chambers, a secret tunnel under the Borovitsky Gate, and 6-meter vaulted underground chambers. Photos of the discovered dungeons of the Kremlin, along with their descriptions, disappeared without a trace in the 1920s. According to rumors, the Cheka were requisitioned.

In the early 1960s a thin, hair-like crack appeared in the building of the Mausoleum. To find out the reasons, a mine was laid. At a depth of 16 m, the drifters stumbled upon the vault of a secret passage. The hiding place, made in the form of a huge pipe, went from the Mausoleum to the mouth of the Yauza. The dimensions of the "pipe" are such that a person with a load on his shoulders can easily pass through it. But didn’t they intend to use this structure for the secret evacuation of the sovereign’s treasury in the event of a siege?

During the construction of the Palace of Congresses, a unique find of world significance was discovered deep in the center of the pit. Traces of the famous chambers of Tsaritsa Natalya Kirillovna have been discovered, according to which the appearance of an ancient monument has been recreated: multi-storey chambers with tents, a porch, a promenade, a garden, and polychrome carved decorations. The early childhood of Peter I is connected with these chambers. An amusing playground was arranged near the choir, on which a funny wooden tent and a funny hut, something like a military camp, were placed. There were slingshots on the platform, wooden cannons, from which they fired wooden cannonballs covered with leather.

In the fourth year, Peter was already a “colonel” of the Petrov regiment. Some of the military toys have been preserved in the remains of the chambers. Of particular interest is a find in the collapse of the chambers - a fragment of a smooth white stone with some kind of drawing: seven alternating rectangles close in size. According to one version, this is a playing chessboard. It is quite possible that the masons who built the chambers, having scratched a smooth limestone slab, played on it with hastily made figures, and then put the improvised board into the masonry.

SPECIAL ZONE

In the 1930s, the Kremlin was closed to the public and was considered a “special zone”. The Bolsheviks were very worried about whether it was possible to secretly enter their residence, and let the archaeologist I.Ya. Stelletsky go down into the secret catacombs and explore the secret city hidden under Borovitsky Hill. They were also worried about the strange funnels that instantly appeared on the territory of the Kremlin. In 1933, a soldier from the guard fell into such a funnel to a depth of 6 meters, cheerfully doing exercises in the courtyard of the Senate. They began to pour water into it, but the water went away to no one knows where. Kremlin buildings were cracking at the seams, sinkholes and landslides appeared. On the first floor of the Arsenal, the floor broke away from the wall and dropped almost a meter. Suspecting that unknown underground structures were the reason for this, the owners of the Kremlin allowed Stelletsky to climb under the Kremlin hill.

The archaeologist discovered more than one underground cache in the Kremlin. There were secret and intra-wall, and underground passages.

In addition, Stelletsky reported to the NKVD about the existence of a secret passage from the Spasskaya Tower to St. Basil's Cathedral "of a very mysterious purpose." But he was not allowed to work in the Kremlin for long - only 11 months. And the underground passage he dug out was soon walled up.

The archaeologist dreamed of opening underground Moscow for tourists, just as the romantic dungeons of Paris or the Roman catacombs are open to them. But, alas, the Kremlin dungeons remain a mystery with seven seals today. In the early 90s, there was a plan to create underground museums and tourist routes. But the project was buried even deeper than Grozny's library. None of the dungeons discovered in the Kremlin has been fully explored. In the Soviet years, most of them - after being examined by representatives of the special services - were forever sealed, covered with earth and poured with concrete.

By the way, in 1989, in the courtyard of the Senate building, a bench fell into the ground along with a tree growing nearby. And a year later, a three-meter failure formed again in the same yard.

INHAVENTED ISLAND

Treasure seekers have always been attracted by the legendary Borovitsky Hill. Over the past 200 years, 24 treasures have been found in the Kremlin alone, and the total number of known valuable finds made on the territory of Moscow is about two hundred. The very first treasure was found in the Kremlin in 1844. It is also the oldest on the Kremlin Hill. The time of his burial is 1177, when Moscow was attacked by the Ryazan prince Gleb. It was then that a noble Muscovite hid her jewelry in the ground. In 1988, near the Spassky Gates, the “Great Kremlin Treasure” was found, hidden by the owners during the siege of Moscow by Batu’s army in 1237. Archaeologists discovered a wooden chest containing about 200 unique jewelry items. The find has no analogues.

When laying the foundation of the Grand Kremlin Palace, the ancient Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus with corridors and hiding places was found. The treasury of Grand Duke Ivan III was kept in its stone cellar. A number of caches and treasuries were arranged in the walls and domes of the Assumption Cathedral. One of them kept the church treasury. In the dungeons of orders there was a secret room with the treasures of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1917, in search of royal treasures, soldiers entered the cellars of the Poteshny Palace, where many brickings were found. The soldiers, having broken them, found a secret room and an underground passage.

During the reconstruction of Red Square, the remains of a unique fortress moat were discovered. Thanks to the Alevizov moat, named after its creator, the Italian Aleviz Fryazin, the ancient Kremlin was surrounded by water on all sides, that is, it was practically on an island. When laying the collector, a human skeleton was found in it in full “armor” - in chain mail and a helmet. The warrior was thrown into the ditch during the battle and instantly went to the bottom. In peaceful days, lions, outlandish for Russia, were kept in it, and during the time of Alexei Mikhailovich, an elephant received as a gift from the Persian Shah was placed in it for the amusement of Muscovites.

According to the chief archaeologist of Moscow, academician Alexander Veksler, the Alevizov moat could become one of the unique tourist "descent underground objects", but the Kremlin dungeons are still inaccessible.

MYSTERIOUS NECROPOLIS

You will not find even a brief mention of the unique Judgment Chamber, built more than 500 years ago, in any Soviet guidebook. This is due to the hushing up of the contents of the chamber - by chance, she was destined to become the last refuge for the remains of the Moscow sovereigns. It was not difficult to hide it, since it is located entirely underground and adjoins the Archangel Cathedral from the south. Muscovites called it the Correct Hut - here those who evaded paying taxes (taxes) were “ruled”. For these purposes, an oak "correctional chair" was used, to which the guilty were chained.

Moscow princes and Russian tsars are buried in the Archangel Cathedral - from Ivan Kalita to Peter II. The sarcophagi with the remains are in the basement of the cathedral (what tourists see in the temple itself are just stone tombstones). The last refuge for their mothers, wives, and daughters was the Ascension Monastery.

The first to be buried in it was the wife of Dimitry Donskoy - Princess Evdokia, who founded the monastery. Anastasia Romanova, the beloved wife of Ivan the Terrible, his mother Elena Glinskaya, grandmother - the Byzantine princess Sophia Paleolog - and his mother-in-law boyar Ulyana were also buried in the place of honor. Maria Miloslavskaya and the mother of Peter I, Natalia Naryshkina, found peace here. In another part of the dungeon, the young king's daughters were buried.

In 1929, during the destruction of the Ascension Monastery, stone sarcophagi with the remains of the Grand Duchesses were transferred to the Judgment Chamber. Fifty sarcophagi with a total weight of about 40 tons were almost manually transferred by museum workers to the Archangel Cathedral and lowered into the underground chamber through a gap in the vault. According to legend, when the sarcophagus of St. Eudoxia was raised, it split. And when they opened the coffin of Marfa Sobakina, the third wife of Ivan the Terrible, to everyone's amazement, they saw a completely preserved body, as if the queen was sleeping. The scientists were struck by the idea that she was poisoned and the poison contributed to such a good preservation of the remains, but as soon as the air touched the body, it instantly crumbled to dust.

POISON AND CROWN

In the 1990s, work began on the study of the royal tombs. All 56 sarcophagi have been opened. Geochemists have analyzed. It turned out that queens and princesses were constantly exposed to substances with a high content of lead, mercury salts and arsenic. Geochemists conducted a spectral analysis of Anastasia Romanova's perfectly preserved dark blond “girlish beauty”. They found that the content of mercury salts in the hair exceeds the norm by several tens of times. Scraps of shroud and decay from the bottom of Anastasia's stone sarcophagus were also contaminated with them. There is poisoning. She died unexpectedly and very young, at the age of 26. In the red hair of Elena Glinskaya, there was also an abundance of mercury. Background on arsenic exceeded 10 times! Evfrosinya Staritskaya broke all records with lead, and they found plenty of other nasty things - arsenic and mercury - in her. The readings have skyrocketed! Scientists have established that they were indeed poisoned, as popular rumor claimed.

Scientists managed to restore the sculptural portrait of Sophia Paleolog from the skull, which disproved another legend - about the illegitimacy of Ivan the Terrible, since his father Vasily III was allegedly barren. When comparing the portraits of grandmother and grandson, not only similar features were found, but also a special Mediterranean type was revealed, which was also the case with the Greek Sophia Paleolog. Grozny could only inherit this type from his grandmother.

The study of the remains from the sarcophagi of the royal necropolis presents complete surprises.

Schoolchildren in the classroom are told the legend of how "Ivan the Terrible died while playing chess."

After the sudden death of the 53-year-old autocrat, there was a rumor among the people that Ivan was strangled by the boyars Bogdan Belsky and Boris Godunov. They whispered about poisoning. There were enough suspicions about the death of the children and close relatives of the autocrat. Anthropologists and forensic doctors came to the aid of historians. When the plate of the sarcophagus of Ivan IV was moved, scientists found that the cartilages of the larynx of the formidable king were perfectly preserved, and the version of strangulation immediately disappeared. According to recent research, Tsar Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan were poisoned with a cocktail of arsenic and mercury, slowly but surely. Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich was poisoned in an accelerated manner, without bothering to imitate treatment for a non-existent disease (mercury salts exceed the norm by 10 times!). After analyzing the remains of the savior of the fatherland, 23-year-old Prince Skopin-Shuisky, scientists established that the talented commander was poisoned at a feast at Tsar Vasily Shuisky. Scientists have compiled a "table of slaughter". The dose of Ivan the Terrible was in 5th place in terms of lethal force, Tsarevich Ivan - in 4th, Tsar Fedor - in 8th, Ivan the Terrible's daughter Maria - in 3rd. And all of them were in the first lines of the "poisonous hit parade".

According to one version, Grozny, suffering from a “shameful disease” - chronic syphilis, was treated with drugs containing mercury. However, the study of the remains of the “infected” father and son did not reveal a “shameful pathology”, but revealed alcohol abuse!

When opening the tomb of Ivan IV, the skeleton was found in the remains of a monastic schema. But the anthropologist M.M. Gerasimov decided to hide this and dressed him in an embroidered linen shirt. Even after his death, Grozny did not find the long-awaited peace. Perhaps that is why his restless shadow is still seen in the Kremlin labyrinths.

BURIED DOLL

In 1929, along with the Ascension Monastery, the Miracle Monastery was also destroyed, which had stood in the Kremlin for almost 600 years. They were blown up so as not to be an eyesore to the Kremlin celestials.

Miracles Monastery was called simply - Miracle. Since the time of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, it has become a custom to baptize newborn royal children here. The monastery was famous for its extensive bunk cellars. Sometimes the glacier was used as a prison for delinquent monks. Here the famous Patriarch Hermogenes perished of starvation. Now, on the site of the two most famous demolished monasteries, there is the largest square of the Kremlin, directly the airfield. No wonder the air hooligan Rust, having violated all boundaries, tried to land his airplane here.

In 1989, archaeologists discovered an unusual hiding place underground, in one of the cellars of the monastery: a stone sarcophagus with a skillfully made (human-sized) doll dressed in a military uniform. On the uniform is the St. George Cross, on the fingers of the “hands”, dressed in white gloves, are gold rings. Historians have established that this is the burial place of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov, who died in 1905 in a bomb explosion thrown by the terrorist Kalyaev. Since little was left of the body during the explosion, a doll dressed in the uniform of Sergei Alexandrovich was placed in the sarcophagus, and the remains were collected in a vessel and placed at the head. The remains of the Grand Duke were reburied in the family tomb of the Romanovs in the Novospassky Monastery.

Kremlin rations

In the 30s of the last century, for the construction of the Kremlin dining room, the Red Porch was demolished, which for almost five centuries was the Kremlin's shrine, the main entrance to the royal palace, to the famous Faceted Chamber. Here the kings solemnly appeared to the people and received honors. And in its place, in 1934, a two-story concrete structure was erected, nicknamed Urodets, which for several decades regularly fed and watered the Kremlin celestials. In the basement of the famous Chamber of Facets, a kitchen was set up that served that same ill-fated dining room. In the late 80s, museum workers began to work on restoring the porch. Useless. The confrontation between Yeltsin and parliament helped. In the White House, before the assault, the inmates had their sewers turned off. And in the Kremlin they closed the dining room. And the following year, the Red Porch was completely restored.

In the very center of the Kremlin, in the basement of the Church of the Deposition of the Robe, there is a unique lapidarium (lapidus in Latin - stone). Shelving under vaulted ceilings. They have details of white stone. This is all that remains of the once famous, and now disappeared palaces, cathedrals, monasteries, royal chambers. The remains of demolished monuments are also buried here. They have been taken out of sight since the late 1920s. There is absolute silence in the lapidary, as in a churchyard. In a conspicuous place, two ancient sarcophagi with the remains rest, and next to it, the plaster coats of arms of the USSR who died in the Bose were attached.

In the next issue of "Through the Looking Glass" we will continue the story about the underground secrets of Moscow.

Sexton's excavations

From time immemorial, the Moscow Kremlin has been not only a symbol of sovereign power, but also a place about which legends were made. Not all of them appeared out of nowhere. Many are based on real documents, reports and notes of servicemen. And hundreds of years of archeology did not leave hope to penetrate the secrets of the dungeons.

They tried to explore three times, and each time the excavation was stopped from above.

The first attempt in the fall of 1718 was made by the sexton of the Church of John the Baptist on Presnya Konon Osipov. Referring to the words of the deacon of the Great Treasury Vasily Makariev, who in 1682, on the orders of Princess Sophia, descended into a secret passage leading from the Tainitskaya tower to Sobakina (Angular Arsenalnaya) and allegedly saw the chambers full of chests, the sexton asked Prince Romodanovsky for permission to look for them. Unfortunately, the clerk himself was no longer alive.

In the Tainitskaya tower, the sexton found the entrance to the gallery, which had to be excavated, and they even gave him soldiers, but there was a danger of collapse, the work was curtailed. Six years later, Osipov returned to the search by decree of Peter I. Ponomar was assigned prisoners to work, but the search was unsuccessful. In the Arsenal corner, Osipov found the entrance to the dungeon, which was flooded with water from a spring. After five meters, he stumbled upon the pillar of the Arsenal, and breaking it in the middle, rested against the rock.
Ten years later, he excavated inside the Kremlin to "intercept" Makariev's move, but was again defeated.

Shcherbatov's attempt

The story was continued in 1894. The case was picked up by an official for special assignments, Prince Nikolai Shcherbatov. In the Nabatnaya Tower, he found the entrance to a walled-up gallery leading to the Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower. In the Konstantin-Eleninskaya tower, they found an oncoming vaulted corridor 62 meters long. At the end of the gallery, behind the brickwork, they found a cache - cannonballs. Later, Shcherbatov dismantled the floor in Nabatnaya and found a passage leading to this hiding place from the other side.
Exploring the Corner Arsenal Tower, Shcherbatov, like Osipov, could not penetrate further.

Then the prince decided to break through the underground gallery from the side of the Alexander Garden. The passage went under the Trinity Tower and led to a small chamber with stone vaults, on the floor of which there was a hatch leading to the same room below. The upper chamber was connected by a corridor with another room. A low tunnel began from the second chamber, which led out into the wall.

Under the Borovitskaya tower, Shcherbatov found a chapel, a dungeon under a diversion archer, a passage that led to Imperial Square, a “foot battle” that made it possible to keep the space near the tower and the chamber under the congress under fire.

After the revolution, the Bolsheviks came to power and immediately took care of the safety of the citadel. They seized photographs of the passages from Shcherbatov, filled up the well in the Tainitskaya tower, walled up the lower chambers in Troitskaya. After a Red Army soldier fell into the ground in the fall of 1933 in the courtyard of the government building, archaeologist Ignatius Stelletsky was invited to explore the dungeons. At one time, he put forward a version that the well of the Tainitskaya tower was once dry, and passages came from it.

His excavations of the "Osipovsky" passage under the Corner Arsenalnaya led to discoveries. Under the wall, they found an unloading arch, opened an exit to the Alexander Garden, which was immediately walled up. But then Stelletsky ran into a stone block. He believed that the further passage was free from earth, but the scientist was forbidden to excavate and was ordered to clear the dungeon of the Corner Arsenal to the bottom. It turned out that the spring, which now and then flooded the dungeons, was enclosed in a stone well with a diameter of five meters and a depth of seven.

Unexpected finds

It was cleared to the bottom in 1975. Archaeologists found in it two military helmets, stirrups and fragments of chain mail of the late 15th century, stone cores. At the bottom of the well, a spillway was arranged, which was supposed to protect the container from overflow. After it was cleared, the problems with flooding stopped.

In addition to archaeologists, builders also made discoveries. In 1930, they found an underground passage in Red Square, in which several skeletons in armor were found. At a depth of five meters, it went from the Spasskaya Tower towards the Execution Ground and had brick walls and a wrought iron vault. The passage was immediately covered with earth.
In 1960, having noticed a microscopic crack in Lenin's mausoleum, the architects began to find out the reason and found an underground passage under the mausoleum as high as a man at a depth of 15 meters.

In June 1974, archaeologists discovered an intra-wall passage near the Middle Arsenal Tower. Behind the wall, a 15th-century staircase covered with earth was opened, which could lead to the treasured tunnels. A year earlier, a gallery was found near the Nabatnaya Tower, which went from the Nabatnaya to the Spasskaya Tower, but the beginning and end of the gallery could not be found.

underground roads

However, moves are not everything! After all, the territory of the Kremlin is large. On April 15, 1882, a dungeon opened in the middle of the road between the Tsar Cannon and the wall of the Chudov Monastery. Three policemen could pass on it in a row. One end of the tunnel rested against the wall of the Chudov Monastery, and the other was littered with stones.

When digging the foundation of the Annunciation Monastery in 1840, cellars and underground passages with piles of human remains were found. They talk about a whole road passing under the Cathedral of the Annunciation. Here in the cathedral, Prince Shcherbatov opened a cache that could lead further down. The prince cleared the space under the floor from debris and reached the mosaic floor, which could easily be the vault of an underground tunnel or structure. The mysterious iron door, allegedly located in the dungeons between the Cathedral of the Annunciation and the Archangel, remains a mystery.

Kremlin - underground

Some particularly zealous researchers of underground Moscow assure us that the Kremlin was originally conceived as a huge underground structure, for which a foundation pit was dug on the site of Borovitsky Hill, in which a whole system of tunnels, rooms and galleries was laid. And only after that the builders began to create the ground part of the Kremlin. Then, they say, the plans for the dungeons were lost or burned on purpose. If we take into account the depth of the cultural layer, which in some places reaches seven or eight meters inside the Kremlin, it can be said with certainty that many finds were previously located on the surface of Borovitsky Hill.
True, the mysteries from this do not become less.

Do archaeologists, historians and geologists correctly interpret what they find at such a depth under the walls? Or are such reports a specially created opinion for viewers? After all, the more plausible version of the pole changes, which involves periodic drifts of Moscow and the Kremlin with mudflows, that is, soil or clay with sand, explains all these facts easily, moreover, it is almost impossible to find other intelligible explanations.

So the official version says this:

1. The loopholes in the Kremlin at a depth of 9 meters are impressive. Why make loopholes in the foundation? The only logical version is that the wall with loopholes used to be OVER the surface of the Earth.
2. Nine meters of garbage (the so-called cultural layer) INSIDE the Kremlin for 500 years - well, it was necessary to arrange a dump there, otherwise there is simply nowhere to take such an amount of garbage. That is, according to the official version, the tsars brought garbage from all over Moscow right to their doorstep - inside the Kremlin. And how do you like this assumption of official science? All agree?)
3. A well dug inside a tower WITH A VOD, which is located at a depth of 10 meters (!). That is, first they dug a hole 10 meters deep, BUILT a tower with a vault in this hole, then they dug a well there, and then they BURIED the tower... Do you think the Kremlin builders are idiots?

It is more likely that at the depth of the found well, we are observing the level of the Earth's surface on the territory of the Kremlin of the 15th century - BEFORE the last change of poles.

The drawings and engravings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) clearly testify to the great and devastating flood during the Middle Ages in Italy.

Of the well-known Moscow dungeons, with the exception of the semi-legendary Metro-2 and the library of Ivan the Terrible, one can name the Neglinka River, encased in stone, and the basement system of an apartment building on Solyanka.
What are the dungeons of the house on Solyanka?

Here is the view for those who have been there.

But first, a little digression into official history.

In the 16th century, at the corner of the "street from the Varvarsky Gates to the Ivanovsky Monastery" and the "big street to the Yauza Gates", a rich merchant Nikitnikov built a Salt Fish Yard. Here they stored and traded salt and its special variety - potash (potassium carbonate), as well as salted fish. The ensemble had a vast courtyard lined with warehouses (barns) and shops. The main gate was marked by a high tower with a guardhouse, and next to it there was another, small gate. There were no street windows on the first floor - to protect against thieves. Trading shops had separate entrances. Barns for storing salt were built with vaults supported by powerful pillars. Probably, they had a basement floor, which was not inferior in area to the above-ground one.

Years later, nearby streets acquired names - Solyanka and Bolshoi Ivanovsky lane (in 1961 it was renamed Zabelina street). In 1912, the rather dilapidated barns and shops of the former Salt Yard began to be dismantled for the construction of an apartment building. When they began to dig a pit, they found a treasure. In the jugs were hidden 13 pounds (about 200 kg, almost half a million pieces) of coins from the reign of Ivan the Terrible, Fyodor Ioannovich and Boris Godunov. The coins, apparently, were the proceeds of the Salt Yard for some period, hidden and forgotten in the Time of Troubles. In the process of greedy dividing this wealth, a construction contractor was injured. The policeman who appeared at the noise confiscated only 13 pounds (7 kg, 9 thousand coins), but they were later returned to the finders after being examined by the Archaeological Commission.

For the construction of houses, the Moscow merchant company bought an irregularly shaped plot from different owners and announced a competition for the best project. A group of architects won: V.V. Sherwood, I.A. German and A.E. Sergeev. They did what the developers needed: they used the intricate shape of the site as tightly as possible, built the building up and down. The house in the neoclassical style was decorated with stucco molding, incongruously overlooking the courtyards-wells, inside there are luxurious apartments with windows to the same place.

Here is the house:

But the most interesting feature of the house is hidden from prying eyes. This is an incredible basement with high vaults, wide corridors where two cars can easily pass, and many interior spaces. The Modelmix group made a magnificent model of one of the buildings of the house, together with the entire basement, on a scale of 1:100. For whom this model was made and where it is now is unknown, but the photographs give an idea of ​​the grandeur of the underground part of the house.

I looked at the photo of this layout for a long time and tried to understand how it was built and why such titanic efforts were invested in the dungeons? Because Since the underground part is not so deep, according to the technology, at first it was necessary to dig a foundation pit, build this entire block of bricks (on a powerful foundation), build floors, and then bury it back. Remove the remaining soil. Can you imagine the task for the 16th century? Such a process is now a grandiose construction. And at that time - even more so. And here are my thoughts on this. Previously, it was the elevated part of ancient Moscow. It is possible that there were more floors above these buildings, which were demolished by the same medieval flood, the consequences of which are shown in the drawings. Giovanni Battista Piranesi On a part of these buildings remaining under the ground (since this is an excellent foundation) new buildings were erected. And some of them remained underground. Later they were cleared and used as barns for storage.

This underground quarter is also very reminiscent of European medieval quarters. Living quarters, narrow streets are still closely adjacent:

Perhaps, during this cataclysm, the library of Ivan the Terrible was also lost. It is located somewhere in a littered building and is waiting in the wings. And are these the only dungeons in Moscow of such a scale and area?

This, of course, is a version, but can anyone explain the fact of such a grandiose underground construction?

Let's continue our tour of the dungeon:

This is what the basement looks like compared to the surrounding landscape. It occupies all the space under the buildings of the house, courtyards and a wide internal driveway:

After the revolution, the house came under the jurisdiction of the People's Commissariat of Railways. In the 1970s and 1980s, the basement of the house was used as a garage for police cars, but because of the high humidity, they quickly fell into disrepair. In Perestroika, garages were given to the residents of the house, and in the 1990s hucksters settled here, interrupting numbers and dismantling stolen cars. In 2002, two diggers drew up a rough plan for the basement. If you compare it with the diagram above, you can see how few rooms they managed to describe, but the efforts of the guys undoubtedly deserve praise.

I propose to see what this dungeon is currently like:

Arched ceilings from the same brick. Know how to build!

In places, even in our time, the ceiling is reinforced with reinforced concrete at the beginning of the 20th century.

Most likely, this column was built in our time with the same purpose to prevent collapse

The walls of the basement are about a meter thick, but in many places thin brick partitions have been erected, crushing the halls into small closets and nooks and crannies littered with perennial debris.

The cellars have a height of 5 m, two-level, and in some places three-level structure. In the underground part of the building there are roads where oncoming cars can freely pass.

Like a street or a roadway

Source and other photos
More photos

Here is another very interesting fact:

In 1972-1974, when laying a foundation pit on both sides of the Mausoleum, 15 meters from the Kremlin wall, the western wall of the Alevizov ditch was discovered. Here is how the Kremlin archaeologists described it: “The top of the wall lies only half a meter from the modern surface of the earth. It was not possible to reach the bottom of the ditch when reaching the design level of the pit (-10 meters). The inner wall of the moat turned out to be similar to the Kremlin one. One facade of the wall, facing inside the moat, was smooth and inclined towards the Kremlin by 1.1 meters by 10 meters in height. The other facade of the wall, facing the Kremlin, consisted of arches and was vertical. The Kremlin walls are arranged in a similar way. The depth of the arches is 1.6 meters. The width of the arch at a depth of 10 meters was 11.5 meters. The distance between the arches is 5 meters. The wall is 4 meters thick. The western wall of the moat was made of bricks on a white stone foundation.

You can also recall these excavations in the Moscow Kremlin:

It can be seen that the log structure of the structure has been preserved under a multi-meter "cultural layer", as archaeologists call it. But even a fool understands that there is no clay-silt cultural layer without cataclysms. The cultural layer is humus and garbage.

On the saw cut of the log, it is clear that the wood has been preserved in excellent condition, has not rotted, as it should have done for a long time with the accumulation of a cultural layer of such a thickness.

As you can easily see, a log house or a house was completely buried under a thick layer of soil, without falling apart or rotting from time to time, and there (under the soil) it was mothballed, which is why it survived almost without damage. Here, a dendrological study of logs from a log house would be very helpful, by which you can determine the date the tree was cut down with an accuracy of up to a year.