11 amazing dead cities of the past that arouse inexhaustible interest among tourists
Angkor in Cambodia
The capital of the Khmer Empire, founded in the 9th century, was the largest pre-industrial city on Earth. Its population numbered a million people at a time when no more than fifty thousand lived in London, and Moscow was fortified with the first wooden structures. After the invasion of conquerors at the beginning of the 15th century, it was abandoned and swallowed up by the jungle, but to this day it has retained its main assets - beautiful temples, statues and bas-reliefs that delight even the most experienced travelers. To get acquainted with all the beauties of Angkor, you will need at least two days, and only a rented bicycle can help you out.
Petra in Jordan
The ancient capital of the Nabataean kingdom was carved right into the rocks and today is called one of the wonders of the world, as it is unlike any other place on earth. Thanks to the trade routes passing through it, it was the richest city, but it suffered from an earthquake in the 4th AD, then was plundered and destroyed by Arabs, crusaders and treasure hunters. But even today, the temples and tombs carved into multi-colored rocks amaze the imagination.
Palmyra in Syria
It was considered the most famous ancient city, having transformed from an oasis into an influential state and trying to compete with the Roman Empire. The Romans remained victorious, destroying Palmyra. From the remaining ruins today one can get an idea of its splendor and grandeur in an era of prosperity.
The “Lost City of the Incas” was built high in the mountains in the mid-15th century, but was abandoned by its population a hundred years later when the Spaniards colonized South America. It has been preserved in its original form to this day, since the conquerors were unable to reach it. Machu Picchu has become the New Seventh Wonder of the World and is of great interest to tourists.
Sukhothai in Thailand
There are two cities with this name - living and dead. To avoid confusion, the latter is also called the historical city of Sukhothai. In the XII-XV centuries, here was the capital of the kingdom of the same name, from where the lands on which almost all of present-day Thailand is located were administered. Numerous temples and a huge statue of a seated Buddha have remained intact to this day.
Once the capital of South India, it is now an abandoned city known to tourists in Goa as Hampi. They are keenly interested in unique temples, the royal palace, and huge statues that have been preserved intact. This city is also magnificent for its surrounding landscape - giant mountains in the form of castles on the banks of the river.
Persepolis in Iran
The capital of the Achaemenid state was built by Cyrus the Great in the 6th century. Alexander the Great, who reached Persia with his army, destroyed it, and the hetaera Thais of Athens set it on fire. This led to its decline and emptiness. Today, its ancient power is reflected in the surviving ruins of palaces, huge columns, magnificent bas-reliefs and statues. Most of the valuable exhibits from Persepolis are kept in many museums around the world.
The founding date of this city is unknown; after its death, the Aztecs came here, and they gave it the name that still exists today. From the 3rd to the 6th centuries it was one of the largest centers of trade and culture in the entire region, of which huge ruins remained a century later. Now in Teotihuacan you can admire the mighty pyramids, the remains of palaces, a huge square and well-ordered streets.
Pompeii in Italy
This city stands out among other dead cities in that it is not known for certain when it was founded, but the date of its death is precisely known - August 24, 79, on this day the Vesuvius volcano erupted. Because its destruction was quick and sudden, it is the best preserved of all the cities of ancient times. From the furnishings of houses left under the hardened lava, information is gleaned about the structure of everyday life and cultural life in the Roman Empire of that time. Therefore, this city is called an open-air museum with residential areas and fortifications, theaters, temples and, of course, the slumbering giant Vesuvius.
Bagan in Myanmar
During its not very long life (XI - XIII centuries), the Pagan kingdom managed to leave a unique heritage. Its capital, the city of Pagan (today a “ghost city”) was destroyed by the Mongol Khan Khibulai with his army, and since then no restoration attempts have been made; it was abandoned by its inhabitants. To this day, an incredibly large number of Buddhist temples, monasteries, and pagodas have been preserved in this place (there are more than 5,000 of them). Now Bagan is a Buddhist Mecca for pilgrims and a source of inexhaustible interest for tourists.
Troy in Turkey
Twenty years ago I was traveling to Bely in a tarantass. The wheels loudly counted the logs of the road, laid across them in the soft brown peat. To the right and left lay swamps, overgrown with gray moss and stunted pines. Mosquitoes swarmed thickly in the damp, warm air. Sometimes a lake, round as a bowl, sparkled among the trees, and ducks took off, frightened by the sound of wheels. The road was often crossed by animal trails. The peat retained the imprints of sweeping elk tracks, and Uncle Eremey, pointing at them with the end of the jester, said:
A bull and a mother with a calf... We have a lot of animals. Ilyich himself came to us to hunt.
The swamps gave way to impassable thickets. Mighty spruce trees raised their sharp tops to the sky, covering the earth with their wide paws, as if blessing and protecting its peace. With a crash, similar to the noise of a falling land, a capercaillie fell from the tree, and again an undisturbed silence covered us. The smell of blasphemous and resin, mixed with the damp breath of peat, floated relentlessly behind us.
“The Dnieper is beginning with us,” Eremey suddenly said and, looking at me
I remember how uncontrollable excitement overwhelmed me from the feeling of the proximity of the sources of the great river. In the fragrant smell of herbs and resin, in the warm and moist breath of peat, in the silence that surrounded us, one could feel the tireless, solemn work of nature - springs flowed from the depths of the earth, and streams of cold clear water, merging into a small stream, slowly ran in the dark peat bed, then among the white sands, ever growing, ever wider, taking into its bed hundreds of streams and rivulets - a mighty Russian river was born. The city of Bely, like a guard, stood at the sources of the Dnieper, protecting the purity of its waters.
It was located in a hollow surrounded by high hills, and in the greenery of the gardens the whiteness of the houses and churches seemed festive. Our carriage rattled loudly over the cobblestones of the street, and Eremey, taking off his cap, bowed to the right and left with the Belians sitting on the benches - here everyone knew each other.
And now twenty years have passed, and I am looking at Belyi through the stereo tube of an artillery observation post. I see in the distance a long empty box of a machine and tractor station, a white cube of an agricultural school with black gaps instead of windows, a headless bell tower...
At the bottom of the hollow, the ruins of houses darken, and only here and there, under the bright March sun, a wall that has not yet fallen is white. The city has disappeared.
The Germans ruled here for a year and a half. They burst into the quiet streets of the city, filled with bombing smoke. The inhabitants fled into the forests to fight, hiding in the impenetrable wilds among swamps and swamps, and those who remained looked in horror at the crossbars of the gallows. The Germans built fortifications on the ridges of the high hills around the city. They well understood the importance this small city had acquired, standing at the intersection of major roads, in the center of a strategic quadrangle, with its corners resting on Rzhev, Vyazma, Smolensk and Velikiye Luki. And there was no way they could escape from Bely further north - the Red Army blocked the enemy’s path with an iron barrier, and around, in dense forests and mossy inaccessible swamps, the Bel partisans settled.
Only gloomy spruce trees know so far how many Germans disappeared without a trace in peat swamps, in gloomily sad thickets, in impenetrable gray mosses.
On March 10, our troops entered the city. Sappers moved ahead, discharging mines, which were placed in large numbers along the road, covered with snow. The Nelidovo highway near the city was so densely strewn with mines that it was only possible to walk along a narrow line in one track. Large pancake-shaped mines, already neutralized, were lying on the sides; explosives were yellow as soap in wooden boxes.
We went out onto Oktyabrskaya Street, stepping on the large cobblestones of the pavement - only these stones, polished by the feet of the Belians, survived in the kingdom of death and destruction. To the right and left stretched an endless wasteland covered with snow. Not a single house, just piles of garbage. Neither
one tree - only charred stumps... A swaying pillar with a tin sign: “House No. 88 Pichugin” is all that remains of human warm housing. Along the street there are rusty skeletons of German cars, dissected by shrapnel - in the cabin of a huge bus, a chain jingles, swaying under the blows of the wind. Remains of the walls of a three-story house. In the basement there is a black hole - an animal hole - where savages of the twentieth century lived. Even in the air you can feel the disgusting smell of an animal hole, and the water around it is of some poisonous green color...
We stand at the crossroads, looking around, in tense anticipation that now, somewhere from behind the ruins, from the basements, city residents will appear. But half an hour passes, an hour, and not a soul, not a sign of life. The city is dead. Thousands of people disappeared without a trace. It feels like you are standing on the ruins of a city that suffered a terrible earthquake, and deep trenches, like cracks, cut through the ground, and as a reminder that people once lived here, on a piece of white wall there is a large inscription in black: “Don’t smoke!” -There was apparently an oil store here.
And we keep waiting and waiting for a person, and we want to shout, call, we want to hear a human voice. We do not believe that it is possible to exterminate the entire population of the city, down to the last inhabitant. But the sappers, who made their way to the center and examined everything, did not meet a soul - only ruins, only mines...
Nearby is a cemetery with a destroyed church. Several long, neat German lines, stretched along a cord - crosses with a swastika, all the same, as if stamped under a press, with standard inscriptions similar to factory marks. Crosses without inscriptions leaned against the stone pillar of the fence, prepared for future use, in anticipation of fresh dead bodies.
Sappers pull a drag from the center.
Have you seen any of the residents?
But we are still standing and waiting for the Soviet man who walked over these cobblestones to the oil store, to the post office, to the cinema, to the market... The faces of the commanders and Red Army soldiers are gloomily mournful. They talk in low voices, almost in a whisper, as they say in a house where a person has died.
It's getting dark. Blue shadows on the snow repeat the outlines of the destroyed walls, and we still wait, beginning to believe that the city has perished to the last inhabitant.
The cameraman looks around in confusion, clutching the camera in his hands - what to shoot? Cinema movement, life, but there is no life around, and the movie camera is powerless to display the most important, the most terrible and monstrous - the extermination of thousands of people by German monsters,
total destruction of old people, women, children, everyone, everyone - all animals, all trees, all dwellings...
German barbarians destroyed the city.
The article was published in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper on March 26, 1943.On our planet there are a huge number of ghost towns, empty and creepy, frightening a traveler who accidentally wanders here with the empty eye sockets of the windows of rickety buildings...
In this rating, we will present the 10 most famous abandoned cities, abandoned by people for various reasons: some were abandoned due to bloody wars, others were abandoned under the onslaught of almighty nature.
1. Buried in the sands of the city of Kolmanskop (Namibia)
Kolmanskop
Kolmanskop is an abandoned town in southern Namibia, located a few kilometers from the port of Lüderitz.
In 1908, railway company employee Zakaris Leval discovered small diamonds in the sand. This discovery caused a real diamond rush and thousands of people flocked to the hot sands of the Namib Desert, hoping to make a fortune.
Kolmanskop was built in record time. It took people only two years to erect beautiful German-style residential buildings in the desert, build a school, a hospital, and even a casino. But the days of the city's existence were already numbered.
After the end of the First World War, the value of diamonds on the world market fell, and every year the extraction of precious stones in the Kolmanskop mines became worse. The lack of drinking water and the constant struggle with sand dunes made the life of the people of the mining town increasingly unbearable.
In the 1950s, the last inhabitants left Kolmanskop and it turned into another ghost town on the world map. Soon nature and the desert almost completely buried the town under sand dunes. Several other old houses and the theater building remained unburied, which is still in good condition.
2. The city of nuclear scientists Pripyat (Ukraine)
Pripyat is an abandoned city in the “exclusion zone” in northern Ukraine. Workers and scientists of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant lived here until the tragic day - April 26, 1986. On this day, the explosion of the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant put an end to the further existence of the city.
On April 27, the evacuation of people from Pripyat began. Nuclear workers and their families were allowed to take with them only the most necessary things and documents; people left all the property acquired over the years in their abandoned apartments. Over time, Pripyat turned into a ghost town, visited only by extreme sports and thrill-seekers.
For those who want to see and appreciate the full scale of the disaster, the Pripyat-Tour company provides excursions to the abandoned city. Due to the high level of radiation, you can safely stay here for no more than a few hours, and most likely, Pripyat will remain a dead city forever.
3. Futuristic resort city of San Zhi (Taiwan)
In the north of Taiwan, not far from the capital of the state, Taipei, there is the ghost town of San Zhi. According to the developers, very wealthy people should have bought these houses, because the architecture of the buildings, made in a futuristic style, was so unusual and revolutionary that it should have attracted a large number of wealthy customers.
But during the construction of the city, inexplicable accidents began to occur here and every week there were more and more of them, until the deaths of workers began to happen every day. Rumor quickly spread the news about the bad city, which had a very bad effect on the city's reputation for the rich.
The construction was finally completed and even a grand opening was held, but none of the potential clients bought a home here. Massive advertising campaigns and huge discounts did not help, San Zhi became a new ghost town. Now access here is prohibited, and local residents believe that the city is inhabited by the ghosts of people who died here.
4. Medieval city of Craco (Italy)
About forty kilometers from the Gulf of Taranto in Italy, lies the abandoned ancient city of Craco. Situated on picturesque hills, it was the patrimony of farmers and plowmen; its inhabitants were engaged in agriculture, growing wheat and other grain crops.
The first mention of the city dates back to 1060, when all the land was owned by the Catholic Archbishop Arnaldo.
In 1981, the population of Craco was just over 2,000 people, and since 1982, due to poor harvests, landslides and constant collapses, the town's population began to decline rapidly. Between 1892 and 1922, more than 1,300 people left Craco. Some left to seek happiness in America, others settled in neighboring cities and villages.
The city was finally abandoned after a strong earthquake in 1963, only a few residents remained to while away their lives in a new ghost town. By the way, it was here that Mel Gibson filmed the scene of the execution of Judas for his masterpiece film “The Passion of the Christ.”
5. The village of Oradour-sur-Glane (France) - a memorial reminiscent of the horrors of fascism
The small ruined village of Oradour-sur-Glane in France stands as a reminder of the monstrous atrocities of the Nazis. During World War II, 642 village residents were brutally murdered by the Nazis as punishment for the capture of SS Sturmbannführer Helmut Kampf by French resistance fighters.
According to one version, the Nazis simply confused villages with similar names.
The high-ranking fascist was in captivity in the neighboring village of Oradour-sur-Vaires. The Germans did not spare anyone - neither the elderly, nor women, nor children... They drove the men to barns, where they targeted their legs with machine guns, then doused them with a flammable mixture and set them on fire.
Women, children and the elderly were locked in the church, then a powerful incendiary device was detonated. People tried to get out of the burning building, but they were mercilessly shot by German machine gunners. Then the Nazis completely destroyed the village.
6. Forbidden Island Gankanjima (Japan)
Gankanjima Island is one of the 505 uninhabited islands in Nagasaki Prefecture, and is located just 15 km from Nagasaki itself. It is also called battleship island because of the walls that protect the city from the sea. The history of settlement of the island began in 1890, when coal was discovered here. The Mitsubishi company bought the entire territory and began implementing a project to extract coal from the bottom of the sea.
In 1916, the first large concrete building was built on the island, and then buildings began to grow like mushrooms after rain. And in 1959, the population of the island had grown so much that 835 people lived here on one hectare! This was a world record for population density.
In the early 1960s, oil in Japan increasingly began to replace coal in production, and its production became unprofitable. Coal mines began to close across the country, and the Gankandjima mines were no exception.
In 1974, Mitsubishi officially announced the closure of the mines and the cessation of all activities on the island. Gankanjima has become another abandoned ghost town. Currently, visiting the island is prohibited, and in 2003, the famous Japanese action film “Battle Royale” was filmed here.
7. Kadykchan - a village in the Magadan region
Kadykchan is an urban-type settlement, located in the Susumansky district of the Magadan region. One of the most famous abandoned northern villages on the Internet. In 1986, according to the census, 10,270 people lived here, and in 2002 - only 875. In Soviet times, the highest quality coal was mined here, which heated almost 2/3 of the Magadan region.
The population of Kadykchan began to rapidly decrease after a mine explosion in 1996. A few years later, the only boiler house heating the village defrosted, and it became simply impossible to live here.
Now it is just a ghost town, one of many in Russia. There are rusty cars in the garages, destroyed furniture, books and children's toys in the rooms. Finally, leaving the dying village, the residents shot the bust of V.I. Lenin installed in the square.
8. The walled city of Kowloon (Hong Kong) - a city of lawlessness and anarchy
One of the most incredible ghost towns, now no longer existing, is the city of Kowloon, which was located near the former Kai Tak Airport, a city where all the vices and base passions of humanity were embodied. In the 1980s, more than 50,000 people lived here.
Probably, there was no longer a place on the planet where prostitution, drug addiction, gambling and underground workshops were widespread.
It was practically impossible to take a step here without bumping into a drug addict pumped up on dope, or a prostitute offering her services for a pittance. Hong Kong authorities practically did not govern the city; it had the highest crime rate in the country.
Eventually, in 1993, Kowloon's entire population was evicted and it briefly became a ghost town. The incredible and creepy settlement was then demolished, and in its place a park of the same name was laid out.
9. Abandoned ghost town of Varosha (Cyprus)
Varosha is a district of Famagusta, a city in Northern Cyprus founded in the 3rd century AD. Until 1974, Varosha was a real “Mecca” for beach lovers. Thousands of tourists from all over the world flocked here to bask in the gentle rays of the Cypriot sun. They say that the Germans and British made reservations in luxury hotels 20 years in advance!
The resort flourished, with new hotels and villas built up, until everything changed in 1974. That year, the Turks invaded Varosha with NATO support to protect the Turkish minority Cypriot population from being persecuted by ethnic Greeks.
Since then, the Varosha quarter has become a ghost town, surrounded by barbed wire, where the Turkish military has not allowed anyone to enter for four decades. The houses are dilapidated, the windows are broken and the streets of the once lively quarter are in widespread devastation. The apartments and shops are empty and completely looted, first by the Turkish military and then by local looters.
10. Lost city of Agdam (Azerbaijan)
Agdam, a city once famous for its wine throughout the Soviet Union, is now dead and uninhabited... The war in Nagorno-Karabakh, which lasted from 1990 to 1994, did not give a chance to exist for the lowland city, where they used to brew excellent cheese and make the best port in the Union.
The collapse of the USSR led to the outbreak of hostilities in many former republics.
Azerbaijan did not escape this either, whose warriors were able to seize wagons with rockets located near Agdam. They turned out to be very convenient to bomb the Armenian Stepanakert. Such actions ultimately led to a sad ending.
In the summer of 1993, Agdam was surrounded by 6,000 soldiers of the Nagorno-Karabakh Liberation Army. With the support of helicopters and tanks, the Armenians practically wiped out the hated city from the face of the earth, and carefully mined the approaches to it. Therefore, to this day, visiting the ghost town of Agdam is unsafe for life.
Ghost towns are scattered all over the planet and silently keep their secrets. The creations of human hands, abandoned by people, stand deserted and silent for decades. They are not destroyed, they are simply abandoned - at one point people left them due to insurmountable reasons. The reason for this could be the threat of a natural disaster, man-made disaster, war or economic crisis.
This list contains the most famous ghost towns in the world!
1 Pripyat, Ukraine
Perhaps the most famous ghost town is Pripyat. This city in Ukraine is relatively young - it was built in 1970. In 1986, about 50 thousand people lived there, the first park was opened, and the infrastructure was actively developing. And one day - April 26, 1986, the city was evacuated due to the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This city is still full of radiation, so excursions and groups of stalkers enter its territory only occasionally.
2 Gunkanjima, Japan
Hashima Island in the East China Sea, nicknamed Gunkanjima (cruiser), was an ordinary rock near Nagasaki in the early 19th century. Coal was discovered there, so the Japanese artificially built an island and began to develop the deposit. The city was the most densely populated place on the entire planet - with an area of 0.063 square meters. m. lived more than 5 thousand people! The peak of activity was reached in the middle of the 20th century, and in 1974 the mines were completely closed, and the city became a ghost.
3 Kolmanskop, Namibia
The history of this city began in 1908, when one of the railway workers discovered diamonds in the southern part of the Namib Desert. The field was transferred to August Strauch, who built a German town on this site with a hospital, schools and a stadium. But the diamond reserves dried up after a couple of years, and people faced terrible conditions. The city was constantly bombarded by sandstorms; there was no water or communication with the world. In 1954, the last inhabitants left the city, and it was left standing in the middle of the desert.
4 Famagusta, Cyprus
In the 1970s, the city of Famagusta was the tourist center of Cyprus. It was especially famous; it housed many hotels and hotels that were visited by celebrities from all over the world. In 1975, Famagusta was invaded by the Turkish army and expelled the Greeks from their homes. The Varosha quarter has become a ghost town, because according to a UN resolution of 1984, only its residents can return to it. At the moment, this huge tourist area of the city is slowly being consumed by nature.
5 Kilamba, Angola
Cities do not always become ghosts because they have been abandoned. Some cities were never settled, such as the huge city of Nova Cidid de Kilamba near the capital of Angola. It is designed for 500 thousand people, and more than $3 billion was spent on construction. In 2012, the city slowly began to be populated, but in fact it still remains a ghost. There are few middle class residents of Angola who could afford such expensive housing. At the moment, there is only one school there, to which people take their children from afar.
6 Tawarga, Libya
The ghost town in Libya was abandoned by local residents in 2011 due to genocide. The rebels began a real persecution of the indigenous peoples of Tawarga, which was once founded by the descendants of black slaves. In addition, this city was under the protection of the Gaddafi regime, so the rebels mercilessly destroyed the population - 1,300 people are still considered missing. Almost 30 thousand people left the city and still cannot return to their homes. The Libyan government cannot provide them with safety and protection from abuse.
7 Kayakoy, Türkiye
The Turkish village of Kayakoy has a rich history, but that hasn't stopped it from becoming a ghost. It was founded in the 19th century by the Greek community and had a developed infrastructure. But in the 1920s, the Greeks were forced to leave the areas belonging to the Turks, so the villagers simply left overnight. In addition, in 1957, a powerful earthquake destroyed the last islands of civilization in Kayakoy.
8 Sanzhi, Taiwan
This city can hardly be called a ghost, since in 2008 a decision was made to demolish it. Unfortunately, it belongs to those buildings where people have never settled. In 1975, it was decided to build an unusual complex of houses in the shape of UFO saucers. They were built from fiberglass and concrete, taking into account the latest technology. However, in the 1980s, when the complex was almost completed, a crisis began in Asia, which led to a freeze in construction. The alien houses were abandoned, and Taiwan decided to demolish them to build a park on the site.
9 Oradour-sur-Glane, France
This village in France received the title of martyr city. Today it still stands as a silent reminder of the atrocities of the war, and a new town of the same name has been built nearby. Oradour in 1944 was inhabited by French partisans who captured a German officer. In retaliation, the SS killed all the inhabitants of the village - 205 children, 240 women and 197 men. Since then the city has been a memorial center.
10 Kadykchan, Russia
One of the most famous abandoned cities in Russia is Kadykchan. It is located in the Magadan region, and was completely abandoned by people in the early 2000s. The city was built in the mid-20th century near a coal deposit, but after an explosion in 1996 the mine was closed. Residents of the village began to be slowly resettled, and in 2001 the houses were completely cut off from electricity.
Paris exists not only in France, but also in China, although it is very small. Construction of the city of Tianducheng began in 2007, when there was a fashion in China for copies of European landmarks. There is the Eiffel Tower, three times smaller than the original, the Arc de Triomphe and the Park of Versailles. However, housing here is so expensive that the city has practically remained a ghost - despite its splendor, no one lives in Tianducheng.
All these cities are completely deserted, so they gradually fall into disrepair, and nature wins its territory back, covering the gray buildings with lush greenery.
At the end of the 16th century, Ermak’s detachment cut the door to Siberia for Rus', and since then the harsh regions beyond the Urals have been persistently developed by small but persistent detachments of miners who set up forts and moved further and further to the east. By historical standards, this movement did not take very long: the first Cossacks clashed with the Siberian Tatars of Kuchum on Tour in the spring of 1582, and by the beginning of the 18th century the Russians secured Kamchatka for themselves. Many were attracted by the riches of the new land, and primarily by furs.
A number of cities founded during this advance still stand today - Tyumen, Krasnoyarsk, Tobolsk, Yakutsk. Once they were the advanced forts of servicemen and industrial people, who went further and further behind the “fur Eldorado”. However, many settlements suffered the fate of the mining towns of the American Gold Rush: having received fifteen minutes of fame, they fell into desolation when the resources of the surrounding areas were exhausted.
In the 17th century, one of the largest such cities arose on the Ob. It existed for just over 70 years, but became legendary, became the first polar city of Siberia, a symbol of Yamal, and in general its history turned out to be short but bright. In the ferocious frosty lands inhabited by warlike tribes, Mangazeya, which quickly became famous, grew up.
The Russians knew about the existence of a country beyond the Urals long before Ermak’s expedition. Moreover, several sustainable routes to Siberia have emerged. One of the routes led through the Northern Dvina basin, Mezen and Pechora. Another option involved traveling from the Kama through the Urals.
The most extreme route was developed by the Pomors. On kochas - ships adapted for navigation in ice, they sailed along the Arctic Ocean, making their way to Yamal. Yamal was crossed by portages and along small rivers, and from there they went out into the Gulf of Ob, also known as the Mangazeya Sea. “Sea” here is hardly an exaggeration - it is a freshwater bay up to 80 kilometers wide and 800 kilometers long, and a three-hundred-kilometer branch to the east, the Tazovskaya Bay, extends from it.
The Mangazeya route was a route for the most desperate sailors, and the bones of those who were unlucky became the property of the ocean forever. One of the lakes on the Yamal Perevolok has a name that is translated from the aboriginal language as “lake of dead Russians.” So there was no need to think about regular safe travel. In addition, there was not even a hint of some kind of base at the end of the journey, where it was possible to rest and repair ships. In fact, the Kochi made one long journey to the Ob Bay and back.
There were enough furs at the mouth of the Ob, but one could not dream of a permanent trading post: it was too difficult to supply it with everything necessary in such conditions. Everything changed at the end of the 16th century. The Russians defeated Kuchum's loose "empire", and soon servicemen and industrial people poured into Siberia. The first expeditions went to the Irtysh basin, the first Russian city in Siberia - Tyumen, so the Ob was first in line for colonization.
Tyumen / Nicolaas Witsen
Rivers for the Russians were a key transport artery throughout the Siberian conquest: a large stream is both a landmark and a road that does not need to be laid in impassable forests, not to mention the fact that boats increased the volume of transported cargo by an order of magnitude. So at the end of the 16th century, the Russians moved along the Ob, building up the coast with fortresses, in particular, Berezov and Obdorsk were founded there. And from there, by the standards of Siberia, it was only a step away to the Ob Bay.
In 1600, an expedition of 150 servicemen under the command of governors Miron Shakhovsky and Danila Khripunov left Tobolsk. The Gulf of Ob, to which they rafted without much incident, immediately showed its character: the storm destroyed the kochi and barges. The bad start did not discourage the governor; it was decided to demand that the local Samoyeds deliver the expedition to its destination using reindeer. On the way, however, the Samoyeds attacked the travelers and beat them up badly, and the remnants of the detachment retreated on the selected deer.
Nevertheless, apparently, some part of the injured detachment still reached Tazovskaya Bay, and a fortification grew up on the shore - Mangazeya. Soon a city was built next to the fort. The name of the town planner is known - this is a certain Davyd Zherebtsov. A detachment of 300 servicemen went to the fortress - a large army by the standards of time and place. The work progressed, and by 1603 a guest house and a church with a priest had already appeared in Mangazeya.
Mangazeya turned into Klondike. True, there was no gold there, but a huge country full of sables stretched around. The bulk of the residents dispersed to surrounding areas that stretched for many hundreds of kilometers. The fortress garrison was small, only a few dozen archers. However, hundreds, or even thousands of industrial people were constantly milling about in the town. Some left to hunt for animals, others returned and sat in taverns.
The city grew quickly, and artisans came to take advantage of the industrial people - from tailors to bone carvers. In the city one could meet both merchants from central Russia and fugitive peasants. In the city, of course, there was a moving hut (office), customs, a prison, warehouses, trading shops, and a fortress with several towers. Interestingly, this entire space was built according to a neat layout.
Furs were bought from the aborigines in full force; detachments of Cossacks reached from Mangazeya even to Vilyui. Metal products, beads, and small coins were used as currency. The sea route became more active: despite all the risk, the delivery of goods that were urgently needed locally (from lead to bread), and the return transportation of mammoth bones and “soft junk” - sables and arctic foxes, became more accessible. Mangazeya received the nickname “gold-boiling”. There was no gold there as such, but there was an abundance of “soft” gold. 30 thousand sables were exported from the city per year.
The tavern was not the only entertainment for residents. Later excavations also revealed the remains of books and beautifully crafted, decorated chessboards. Quite a few in the city were literate, which is not surprising for a trading post. Archaeologists have often found objects with the names of their owners carved on them. Mangazeya was not at all just a transit point: women and children lived in the city, the inhabitants had animals and farmed near the walls. In general, livestock farming, of course, took into account local specifics: Mangazeya was a typical old Russian city, but residents preferred to ride around the surrounding area on dogs or deer.
Alas, having taken off rapidly, Mangazeya quickly fell. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, the polar zone is not a very productive place as such. The Mangazeans dispersed hundreds of miles from the city for an obvious reason: fur-bearing animals were disappearing from the immediate vicinity too quickly. For local tribes, sable was not of particular importance as a hunting object, so in northern Siberia the population of this animal was huge and the sables lasted for decades. However, sooner or later the fur-bearing animal had to dry up, which is what happened. Secondly, Mangazeya fell victim to bureaucratic games within Siberia itself.
Map of Tobolsk, 1700
In Tobolsk, the local governors looked without enthusiasm to the north, where huge profits were slipping out of their hands, so from Tobolsk they began to write complaints to Moscow, demanding that the Mangazeya sea passage be closed. The rationale looked peculiar: it was assumed that Europeans could penetrate Siberia in this way. The threat looked dubious. For the British or Swedes, traveling through Yamal became completely pointless: too far, risky and expensive.
However, the Tobolsk governors achieved their goal: in 1619, rifle outposts appeared in Yamal, turning away everyone trying to overcome the drag. It was intended to expand trade flows to the cities of southern Siberia. However, the problems overlapped one another: Mangazeya was already becoming poorer in the future, and now administrative barriers were being added.
Internal turmoil began in Mangazeya. In 1628, two governors did not share powers and started a real civil strife: the townspeople kept their own garrison under siege, and both had cannons. There is chaos inside the city, administrative difficulties, scarcity of land. In addition, Turukhansk, also known as New Mangazeya, was rapidly growing to the south. The center of the fur trade shifted, and people left behind it. Mangazeya began to fade, but still lived due to the inertia of the fur boom.
Turukhansk (New Mangazeya) / Nikolaas Witsen
Even the fire of 1642, when the town completely burned down and, among other things, the city archive was lost in the fire, did not finish it off completely, nor did a series of shipwrecks, which caused shortages of bread. Several hundred fishermen wintered in the city in the 1650s, so Mangazeya remained a significant center by Siberian standards, but it was already only a shadow of the boom of the beginning of the century. The city was sliding towards final decline slowly but steadily.
In 1672, an official decree of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was issued on the abolition of the city. The Streletsky garrison withdrew and went to Turukhansk. Soon the last people left Mangazeya. One of the latest petitions indicates that in the town that was once bursting with wealth, only 14 men and a number of women and children remained. At the same time, the Mangazeya churches also closed.
A traveler in the mid-19th century once noticed a coffin sticking out from the bank of the Taz River. The river washed away the remains of the city, and fragments of a variety of objects and structures could be seen from under the ground. At the beginning of the 20th century, where Mangazeya stood, the remains of fortifications were visible, and in the late 40s, professional archaeologists began to study the ghost town. The real breakthrough occurred at the turn of the 60-70s of the last century. An archaeological expedition from Leningrad spent four years excavating the Golden Boiling.
The polar permafrost created enormous difficulties, but in the end the ruins of the Kremlin and 70 various buildings, buried under a layer of soil and a grove of dwarf birches, were brought to light. Coins, leather goods, skis, fragments of carts, sledges, compasses, children's toys, weapons, tools. There were amulets figurines that looked like a carved winged horse. The northern city was revealing its secrets.
In general, the value of Mangazeya for archeology turned out to be great: thanks to the permafrost, many finds that would otherwise crumble to dust are perfectly preserved. There was also a foundry with a master's house, and in it were rich household utensils, including even Chinese porcelain cups. The seals turned out to be no less interesting. A lot of them were found in the city, including the Amsterdam Trading House. The Dutch came to Arkhangelsk, maybe someone got beyond Yamal, or perhaps this is just evidence of the removal of some furs for export to Holland. Finds of this kind also include a half-taler from the mid-16th century.
One of the finds is filled with gloomy grandeur. The burial of an entire family was discovered under the floor of the church. Based on archival data, there is an assumption that this is the grave of governor Grigory Teryaev, his wife and children. They died during the famine of the 1640s while trying to reach Mangazeya with a caravan of grain.
The disappeared city of the Far North is not just another settlement. At first, Mangazeya became a springboard for the movement of Russians into the depths of Siberia, and then presented a real treasure to archaeologists and an impressive history to descendants.
Materials used from an article by Evgeniy Norin