DOUBLE BOTTOM
The history of the Kremlin dungeons is one of Russia's most closely guarded secrets. IN tsarist times in the Kremlin, under the cathedrals and towers, treasuries and secret chambers were built, combat moves and intra-wall transitions. 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 Borovitskaya tower. It was rumored that the Senate Tower was the hatch into the underground Kremlin. In 1929, while clearing debris from the underground part of the tower, a dungeon more than 6 meters deep was discovered underneath it. Many towers had double walls.
The Beklemishevskaya Tower was used as a place of torture and imprisonment of prisoners. For impudent speeches and complaints against the Grand Duke Vasily III here they cut out the tongue of boyar Ivan Beklemishev. Prince Khovansky was accused of treason and tortured. In the basements of the Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower there is the famous “Konstantinovsky dungeon”, the prison of the Search Order, and in the diversion chamber there is a torture chamber and the legendary “stone bags”. There, investigations were carried out not only for robbery, but also for the illegal trade in wine and tobacco. The people simply called the tower “Torture” and they said that “few people could stand it for more than a day, and others lost their minds.”
In the Tainitskaya Tower there was a secret underground passage to the river for obtaining water during the siege. In 1852, after a rainstorm, 4 underground chambers opened in the washed-out pavement at the foot of the tower. Not far from the Spasskaya Tower in the 17th century, a hole opened in the ditch into a secret passage that led to an underground chamber under St. Basil's Cathedral, in the basement of which they found tramps who had entered through an underground gallery.
In 1894, archaeologist Prince N.S. Shcherbatov examined the first floor of the Alarm Tower and found in it the entrance to a walled-up gallery running along the Kremlin wall. The researcher managed to discover a secret passage, secret chambers, a secret tunnel running under the Borovitsky Gate, and 6-meter vaulted underground chambers. Photographs of the discovered Kremlin dungeons, along with their descriptions, disappeared without a trace in the 1920s. According to rumors, the Cheka were requisitioned.
In the early 1960s. a hair-thin crack appeared in the Mausoleum building. To find out the reasons, a mine was founded. At a depth of 16 m, the miners stumbled upon the arch of a secret passage. The cache, 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 it is easy to a person will pass with a load on your shoulders. Did they intend to use this building 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 Queen Natalya Kirillovna have been discovered, from which the appearance has been recreated ancient monument: multi-storey chambers with tents, porch, walkway, garden, polychrome carved decorations. Associated with these chambers early childhood Peter I. Near the choir there was an amusing platform, on which an amusing wooden tent and an amusing hut, something like a military camp, were erected. On the site there were slingshots and wooden cannons from which they fired wooden cannonballs covered with leather.
In his fourth year, Peter was already a “colonel” of the Petrov regiment. Some of the war toys were preserved in the remains of the chambers. Special interest represents 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 scratched a smooth limestone slab, played hastily made figures on it, and then used an improvised board for masonry.
SPECIAL ZONE
In the 1930s, the Kremlin was closed to visitors and was considered a “special zone.” The Bolsheviks were very worried about whether it was possible to secretly penetrate their residence, and they allowed archaeologist I.Ya. Stelletsky to go down into the secret catacombs and explore the secret city hidden under Borovitsky Hill. They were also worried about the strange craters that instantly appeared on the territory of the Kremlin. In 1933, a security soldier, who was cheerfully doing exercises in the courtyard of the Senate, fell into such a crater to a depth of 6 meters. They began to pour water into it, but the water went to God knows where. Kremlin buildings were bursting at the seams, failures and landslides appeared. On the first floor of the Arsenal, the floor came off the wall and dropped almost a meter. Suspecting that the reason for this was unknown underground structures, the owners of the Kremlin allowed Stelletsky to climb under the Kremlin hill.
An archaeologist has discovered more than one underground cache in the Kremlin. There were secret and internal, 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 given only 11 months to work in the Kremlin. And the underground passage he excavated was soon walled up.
The archaeologist dreamed of opening underground Moscow to tourists, just as the romantic dungeons of Paris or the Roman catacombs are open to them. But, alas, the Kremlin dungeons remain a sealed secret even today. In the early 90s, there was a plan to create underground museums and tourist routes. But the project was buried even deeper than the Grozny library. None of the dungeons discovered in the Kremlin have been fully explored. IN Soviet years Most of them - after inspection by representatives of the special services - were permanently sealed, covered with earth and filled with concrete.
By the way, in 1989 courtyard building of the Senate, a bench fell into the ground along with a tree growing nearby. A year later, a three-meter hole formed again in the same yard.
INHABITED 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 total number famous valuable finds, made in Moscow, 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 Ryazan prince Gleb. It was then that the noble Muscovite hid her jewelry in the ground. In 1988, near the Spassky Gate, the “Big Kremlin Treasure” was found, hidden by the owners during the siege of Moscow by Batu’s army in 1237. Archaeologists discovered a wooden casket containing about 200 unique pieces of jewelry. 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. In the walls and domes of the Assumption Cathedral was built whole line hiding places and treasuries. The church treasury was kept in one of them. In the dungeons of the orders there was a secret room with the treasures of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In 1917, in search of royal treasures, soldiers entered the basements of the Amusement Palace, where many bricks were discovered. The soldiers, having defeated 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, so named in honor of its creator, the Italian Aleviz Fryazin, the ancient Kremlin was surrounded on all sides by water, 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 a ditch during the battle and instantly sank to the bottom. In peaceful days, lions, outlandish for Rus', 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, Alevizov ditch could become one of the unique tourist “descent underground objects”, but the Kremlin dungeons are still inaccessible.
MYSTERIOUS NECROPOLIS
In no Soviet guidebook you will not find even a brief mention of the unique Court Chamber, built more than 500 years ago. This is due to the secrecy of the contents of the chamber - by chance it was destined to become the last refuge of the remains of Moscow empresses. 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 Izba - here they “ruled” those who evaded paying taxes (taxes). 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. Sarcophagi with remains are located 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 there was the wife of Dimitri Donskoy, Princess Evdokia, who founded the monastery. Anastasia Romanova, the beloved wife of Ivan the Terrible, his mother Elena Glinskaya, and grandmother were also buried in the most honorable place. Byzantine princess Sophia Paleologue - and his mother-in-law, noblewoman Ulyana. Here Maria Miloslavskaya and the mother of Peter I, Natalia Naryshkina, found peace. In another part of the dungeon, the royal daughters were buried.
In 1929, during the defeat 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 transported by museum workers to the Archangel Cathedral and lowered through a hole in the vault into the underground chamber. According to legend, when the sarcophagus of St. Evdokia 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. Scientists were struck by the idea that she was poisoned and the poison contributed to such good preservation of the remains, but as soon as the air touched the body, it instantly crumbled into dust.
POISON AND CORONA
In the 1990s, work began on the study of the royal tombs. All 56 sarcophagi have been opened. Geochemists carried out the analysis. It turned out that queens and princesses were constantly exposed to substances with high levels of lead, mercury salts and arsenic. Geochemists conducted spectral analysis perfectly preserved dark-blond “maiden beauty” Anastasia Romanova. They found that the content of mercury salts in hair exceeds the norm by several tens of times. They also turned out to be contaminated with fragments of the shroud and decay from the bottom of Anastasia’s stone sarcophagus. There is poisoning. She died unexpectedly and very young, at the age of 26. Elena Glinskaya's red hair also contained an abundance of mercury. The background level for arsenic is 10 times higher! Evfrosinya Staritskaya broke all the records with lead, and they found plenty of other nasty things - arsenic and mercury. The readings were off the charts! Scientists have determined that they were indeed poisoned, as popular rumor claimed.
Scientists managed to reconstruct the skull sculptural portrait Sophia Paleologus, which refuted another legend - about the illegitimacy of Ivan the Terrible, since his father Vasily III was allegedly infertile. When comparing the portraits of the grandmother and grandson, not only similar features were revealed, 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 remains from the sarcophagi of the royal necropolis brings complete surprises.
During lessons, schoolchildren are told a legend about how “Ivan the Terrible died while playing chess.”
After sudden death The 53-year-old autocrat was rumored among the people that Ivan was strangled by the boyars Bogdan Belsky and Boris Godunov. They also whispered about poisoning. There was also plenty of suspicion about the death of the children and close relatives of the autocrat. Anthropologists and forensic doctors came to the aid of historians. When the slab of the sarcophagus of Ivan IV was moved, scientists discovered that the cartilage of the formidable king’s larynx was perfectly preserved, and the version of strangulation immediately disappeared. According to latest research, Tsar Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan were poisoned with a cocktail of arsenic and mercury, slowly but surely. Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich was poisoned in an accelerated manner, without bothering to imitate treatment for a non-existent illness (mercury salts exceeded the norm 10 times!). Having analyzed the remains of the savior of the fatherland, 23-year-old Prince Skopin-Shuisky, scientists established: talented commander poisoned at a feast hosted by Tsar Vasily Shuisky. Scientists have compiled a “lethality table.” The dose of Ivan the Terrible was in 5th place in its lethal force, Tsarevich Ivan - in 4th, Tsar Fyodor - 8th, Ivan the Terrible's daughter Maria - in 3rd. And they all ended up 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, a study of the remains of the “infected” father and son did not reveal “shameful pathology,” but did reveal alcohol abuse!
During the opening of the tomb of Ivan IV, the skeleton was discovered in the remains of the monastic schema. But anthropologist M.M. Gerasimov decided to hide it and dressed him in an embroidered linen shirt. Even after death, Ivan the Terrible 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 Voznesensky, the Chudov Monastery, which had stood in the Kremlin for almost 600 years, was also destroyed. They were blown up so as not to be an eyesore to the Kremlin celestials.
The Miracle Monastery was simply called 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 two-tier cellars. Sometimes the glacier was used as a place of imprisonment for guilty monks. Here the famous patriarch Hermogenes died of hunger. Now on the site of the two most famous demolished monasteries - the most big square The Kremlin, right at the airfield. No wonder the air hooligan Rust, having violated all boundaries, tried to land his airplane here.
In 1989, archaeologists discovered an unusual cache underground, in one of the basements of the monastery: a stone sarcophagus with a skillfully made (human-sized) doll, dressed in a military uniform. On the uniform - St. George's Cross, on the fingers of the “hands”, dressed in white gloves, there 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 Romanov family tomb in the Novospassky Monastery.
KREMLIN RATIONS
In the 30s of the last century, for the sake of the construction of the Kremlin dining room, the Red Porch was demolished, which for almost five centuries was a Kremlin shrine, the main entrance to royal palace, to the famous Chamber of Facets. 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 the Freak, which regularly fed and watered the Kremlin celestials for several decades. In the basement of the famous Faceted Chamber, a kitchen was installed 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 residents' sewage system was turned off. And in the Kremlin, the dining room was closed. And on next year The red porch has been 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). There are shelving units under the vaulted ceilings. They have details made of white stone. This is all that remains of the once famous, but now disappeared palaces, cathedrals, monasteries, and royal chambers. The remains of demolished monuments also rest here. They have been kept out of sight since the late 20s. There is absolute silence in the lapidarium, like in a churchyard. Two ancient sarcophagi with remains rest in a prominent place, and next to them are plaster coats of arms of the deceased USSR.
In the next issue of “Through the Looking Glass” we will continue the story about the underground secrets of Moscow.
11.04.2016
Every Russian has known from childhood the slender towers of the Moscow Kremlin, its red-brick battlements, but the Kremlin we are used to has very little in common with the impregnable stronghold that was once erected on Borovitsky Hill to protect Muscovites. The Kremlin was rebuilt and remodeled many times, it was blown up, burned and modified beyond recognition, obsolete parts were demolished and something new, modern was erected. Now, after 550 years of its existence, only a few fragments have survived from the Kremlin, the foundation, and white stone blocks inside the walls and towers; the rest is the result of reconstructions. However, something else could have been preserved, albeit not completely, but partially - the Kremlin dungeons.
For a long time there was an opinion that the word “Kremlin” was of Tatar origin, while the famous Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin did not come to the conclusion that “Kremlin” is a derivative of flint, and therefore the origin of this word is Russian. It means a stronghold, a city as solid as flint. This means that the city itself had to correspond to the name and, of course, it did. But could only walls and towers, even if extremely thick (thickness Kremlin walls in some areas reaches 5.5 meters) provide protection from the enemy? - of course not! There were a huge number of additional obvious and secret defense structures in the Kremlin.
To design and build a new and modern fortress at the end of the 15th century, the famous military engineer Aristotle Fioravanti Degli Alberti was invited from Italy, according to whose designs many first-class bridges, towers, bastions and fortresses were built. To get such a figure as Aristotle was not an easy matter, especially since both the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan the Third and Turkish Sultan. God alone knows what made the elderly Aristotle choose Moscow, but on March 26, 1475, the famous Italian arrived to the Grand Duke. The first task that Fioravanti received was to build the Assumption Cathedral, since the previous cathedral building, erected by Russian craftsmen, unexpectedly collapsed. Aristotle did not come to Moscow alone, but accompanied by his student Pietro Antonio Solari, to whom he apparently entrusted supervision of the work during his periodic trips to remote Russian cities. After all, Fioravanti had to visit both Vladimir and Solovki to get acquainted with characteristic features Russian temple architecture and breathe Italian engineering thought into them, identify places for the extraction of clay, lime and build factories for the production of bricks. As the Russian thought, and then Soviet historian Professor Ignatius Stelletsky, who devoted almost 50 years of his life to the underground Kremlin scientific life: simultaneously with the Assumption Cathedral, the talented Italian also built deep underground secret chambers, into which the Grand Duke’s treasury was immediately placed, which included a huge number of Byzantine documents, books and tomes, which later made up the bulk of famous Library Ivan the Terrible.
In addition, Aristotle also designed an underground passage that connected the very first Kremlin tower, Taynitskaya (1485) with Sobakina (Corner Arsenal 1492). This underground passage, laid at great depth, had large diameter 3-3 meters, was discovered in the form of preserved fragments in 1934 by Professor Stelletsky, during archaeological research. This move was mentioned in a few royal “reports”, miraculously preserved in Russian archives and prompted Stelletsky to search. There is a version that the course continued further: from the Tainitskaya Tower it passed under the bottom of the Moscow River and ended in Zamoskvorechye, but this version has not yet received confirmation. Also in the Kremlin there were underground powder magazines, water storage tanks, and even a gravity water supply system!
At the beginning of the 20th century, when laying sewer along the eastern wall overlooking Red Square, an underground passage was discovered under Nikolskaya Street, not built later start 16th century, that is, laid simultaneously with the construction of the Kremlin.
The walls once had a very complex structure: immediately behind the battlements with inside the so-called “upper battle galleries” were located - pedestrian paths from which Muscovites fired defensive fire if necessary. Inside the walls themselves there were also stairs and passages with loopholes. Moreover, the passages inside the walls, or more correctly, the galleries, were divided into “bottom battle” running along the bottom, above the very foundation of the wall, and “middle battle” - passing in the middle. Not infrequently, due to changes in the topography of the earth and, accordingly, the height of the wall, such a gallery could begin with a “middle battle” and end with a “plantar battle”. The bricked loopholes of a similar gallery can be seen in the area from Nabatnaya to the Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower, on Vasilyevsky Spusk.
The discovered tower dungeons are striking in their complexity and intricacy; as a rule, they have several underground floors and a foundation depth of up to 18 meters! But this can be explained quite simply: the towers were designed in such a way that each was like a fortress within a fortress. Accordingly, tower foundations were laid deep to resist an undermining or explosion that the enemy could carry out from underground. By the way, the word “tower” comes from Tatar word"bash" which means "head" of the fortress. But in its original performance Kremlin towers had neither windows nor spiers. These were military giants, gloomy, invincible, with their very appearance capable of instilling horror in a daredevil who encroached on their inaccessibility.
Along with above-ground and underground construction, Aristotle planned major hydraulic works, which included changing the bed of the Neglinnaya River, deepening and expanding its bed, constructing a water-filled ditch, 13 meters deep and 30 wide, laid from the side of Red Square and existed until the beginning of the 19th century. century. And drawbridges and bridgehead towers, of which only the Kutafya Tower has survived to this day.
These works were carried out later, from 1508 to 1516, by the Italian Aloisio de Carisano or, as Moscow chroniclers called him, Aleviz Fryazin.
How did the Grand Duke of Moscow thank the creators of this engineering miracle, which has no equal in the whole world? He ordered the great master Aristotle to be thrown into prison behind the Church of St. Lazarus. His student Pietro Antonio Solari was killed after he built five main towers and a gravity water supply system; chroniclers were then told to write down: “he died, having caught a cold from underground water.” Nothing is known, except the years of arrival and the work performed, and about other Italian architects - comrades-in-arms of Aristotle and Solari - Mark Fryazin, Anton Fryazin, Aleviz the Old and Aleviz the New. All of them ended their days far from their homeland. Muscovy skillfully kept his military secrets, and his father, Ivan Vasilyevich the third, although he was called Justice by his contemporaries, also had the nickname Grozny during his lifetime and, of course, not by chance.
Digger, Moscow expert Daniil Davydov.
Dungeons of the Moscow Kremlin long years attract the attention of historians and archaeologists. Research and excavations have been carried out here several times, but the underground Kremlin still holds a lot of mysteries.
Sexton's excavations
From time immemorial, the Moscow Kremlin was not only a symbol of sovereign power, but also a place about which legends were made. Not all of them arose on empty space. Many are based on real documents, reports and notes of service people. And hundreds of years of archeology have not given up hope of penetrating the secrets of the dungeons. They tried to explore them three times, and each time the excavations were 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 clerk of the Great Treasury Vasily Makariev, who in 1682, on the orders of Princess Sophia, went down into the secret passage leading from the Tainitskaya tower to the Sobakina (Corner Arsenal) and allegedly saw chambers filled with 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 a gallery that needed to be excavated, and they even gave him soldiers, but there was a danger of collapse, and the work was stopped. Six years later, Osipov returned to the search by decree of Peter I. The sexton was assigned prisoners for work, but the search was not crowned with success. In the Arsenalnaya corner, Osipov found the entrance to the dungeon, which was flooded with water from a spring. Five meters later he came across an Arsenal pillar, and breaking it in the middle, he ran into the rock. Ten years later, he carried out excavations inside the Kremlin to “intercept” Makaryev’s move, but was again defeated.
Shcherbatov's attempt
The story continued in 1894.
The case was picked up by an official special assignments Prince Nikolai Shcherbatov. In the Nabatnaya Tower, he found the entrance to a walled-up gallery leading to the Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower. A counter vaulted corridor 62 meters long was found in the Konstantino-Eleninskaya Tower. 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. While exploring the Corner Arsenal Tower, Shcherbatov, like Osipov, was unable to penetrate further. Then the prince decided to break through the underground gallery from 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. From the second chamber a low tunnel began, which went into the wall. Under the Borovitskaya Tower, Shcherbatov found a chapel, a dungeon under a diversion arch, 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 ramp under fire.
Spring
After the revolution, the Bolsheviks came to power and immediately became concerned about the security of the citadel. They confiscated photographs of the passages from Shcherbatov, filled up the well in the Tainitskaya tower, and walled up the lower chambers in the Trinity. After a Red Army soldier fell underground in the courtyard of the government building in the fall of 1933, archaeologist Ignatius Stelletsky was invited to explore the underground. At one time, he put forward a version that the well of the Tainitskaya Tower was once dry, and there were passages coming from it. His excavations of the “Osipovsky” passage under Corner Arsenalnaya led to discoveries. They found an unloading arch under the wall and opened an exit to the Alexander Garden, which was immediately walled up. But then Stelletsky ran into a boulder. He believed that the passage further was free of earth, but the scientist was prohibited from excavating and ordered to clear the dungeon of the Corner Arsenal to the bottom. It turned out that the spring, which kept flooding 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 from the late 15th century, and stone cannonballs. A spillway was installed at the bottom of the well, which was supposed to protect the container from overflowing. After it was cleared, the flooding problems stopped.
In addition to archaeologists, builders also made discoveries. In 1930, on Red Square, they found an underground passage in which several skeletons in armor were found. At a depth of five meters he walked from the Spasskaya Tower towards Execution Place and had brick walls and a wrought iron vault. The passage was immediately covered with earth. In 1960, having noticed a microscopic crack in the Lenin Mausoleum, architects began to find out the reason and found an underground passage under the mausoleum as tall as a man at a depth of 15 meters. In June 1974, archaeologists discovered an internal passage near the Middle Arsenal Tower. Behind the walling, a staircase from the 15th century, covered with earth, opened up, which could lead to the treasured tunnels. A year earlier, a gallery was found near the Nabatnaya Tower, leading from the Nabatnaya Tower to the Spasskaya Tower, but the beginning and end of the gallery could not be found.
Underground roads
However, moves aren't everything! After all, the Kremlin territory is large.
On April 15, 1882, a cave-in opened in the middle of the road between the Tsar Cannon and the wall of the Chudov Monastery. Three policemen could walk along it abreast. One end of the tunnel rested against the wall of the Chudov Monastery, and the second 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 Annunciation Cathedral. Here in the cathedral, Prince Shcherbatov discovered a hiding place that could lead further down. The prince cleared the space under the floor of debris and reached the mosaic floor, which could easily have been a vault underground tunnel or structures. The mysterious iron door, supposedly located in the dungeons between the Annunciation and Archangel Cathedrals, also 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 it was laid the whole system tunnels, rooms and galleries. And only after this the builders began creating the above-ground part of the Kremlin. Then, they say, the dungeon plans were lost or deliberately burned. If we take into account the depth of the cultural layer, which in some places reaches seven to eight meters inside the Kremlin, we can say with confidence that many finds were previously located on the surface of Borovitsky Hill.
True, this does not make the mysteries any less.
Maya Novik
There, too, an entrance to a tunnel was discovered, although it was located below the first one. As it turned out, the first of the found dungeons in ancient times was used as a close-combat gallery, that is, it served for shelling the enemy during a close siege, and the second was for secret communication between neighboring towers (in ancient times, as historians say, intra-wall passages connected all the Kremlin towers).
In addition, the researcher managed to discover a secret passage connecting the Nikolskaya Tower with the Corner Arsenalnaya. And get into the tunnel running under the Borovitsky Gate (underground chambers covered with earth up to the 6-meter arches were also discovered there), and also explore the hidden chambers located near the Trinity Tower at a 9-meter depth. Shcherbatov's photographs of the Kremlin dungeons he discovered, along with their descriptions, disappeared without a trace in the 1920s. According to rumors, the Cheka were requisitioned. The architect I.E., who examined the Kremlin in 1918 Bondarenko reported that in the Beklemishevskaya tower there was a “cache”: rumor dungeons (rumors were passages that could be used to observe the enemy and surprise military landings) and underground galleries.
The dungeon of the Beklemishevskaya tower, together with the rumor, was already used as a place of torture and imprisonment of prisoners in 1525. For impudent speeches and complaints against Grand Duke Vasily III, the tongue of boyar Ivan Nikitich Bersen-Beklemishev was cut out here. And Tsar Ivan the Terrible, accusing Prince Andrei Fedorovich Khovansky of treason, ordered him to be “tortured and executed by trade execution and imprisoned in the Beklemishevskaya strelnitsa.”
In 1929, while clearing debris from the underground part of the Senate Tower, a dungeon more than 6 meters deep was discovered underneath it. Stelletsky put forward a version: the Senate Tower is a hatch into the underground Kremlin. However, something else is more likely - initially the tower dungeon had two or three tiers with wooden platforms; over time they rotted and fell down, thereby forming a “mysterious” well.
In 1930, when laying drains from the Kremlin on Red Square, an underground passage as tall as a man was discovered (and very soon covered with earth) - it was located just to the right of the Spasskaya Tower at a depth of 4 meters and went towards the Execution Ground.
In 1933-1934. Ignatius Stelletsky, while examining the Corner and Middle Arsenal towers, discovered more than one underground cache here. There were secret passages inside the walls and underground passages (one was completely cleared). In addition, Stelletsky reported to the NKVD about the existence of a secret passage from the Spasskaya Tower to St. Basil's Cathedral, “near which there is a descent into a large tunnel under Red Square of a very mysterious purpose.” During excavation work carried out near the Alarm Tower in 1972, a piece of an underground passage appeared at a 4-meter depth.
In 1973, when laying a pit in the Kremlin near the Alarm Tower, the vault of an underground gallery was discovered at a depth of 4 meters. It was adjacent to the foundation of the Alarm Tower, that is, it ran parallel to the Kremlin wall towards the Spasskaya Tower. However, it was not possible to clear the gallery completely and find out where the tunnel began and ended. Not far from the Middle Arsenal Tower, during restoration work in the 1970s, a passage into the wall was opened, turning towards the Corner Arsenal Tower. Kremlin archaeologists were unable to penetrate far through it - it was blocked with bricks.
No information has been found about the hiding places of the Commandant's Tower, but there are rumors that a pale, disheveled woman with a pistol in her hand lives there. Of course, this is the famous Fanny Kaplan, who was personally shot by the then Kremlin commandant Malkov, but you will learn about this and more in the next part... None of the dungeons discovered in the Kremlin both before and after the revolution were fully explored. most of them - after inspection by representatives of the special services - were permanently sealed or covered with earth or even filled with concrete.
For several centuries now, witnesses have regularly appeared who have seen a shadow flickering in the lower tiers of the bell tower of Ivan the Great and the footsteps of the ghost of Ivan the Terrible being heard. Even the memories of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II have been preserved that during his stay in the Kremlin on the eve of his coronation, the spirit of this tyrant appeared to him and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. (Subsequently, there were expert interpreters who claimed that such a visit from a ghost foreshadowed a future collapse great dynasty Romanovs.) Other phantoms have also chosen the Kremlin strongholds. Starting from the Time of Troubles, when the hated False Dmitry was killed in the Kremlin, Muscovites sometimes began to observe the blurred outlines of the figure of the Pretender, flashing in the twilight between the battlements of the walls. IN Once again this ghost appeared to late revelers on an August night in 1991 - just before the coup attempt!
About 40 years ago, another “otherworldly” inhabitant was discovered in the main government residence of the country... One evening, the watchman on duty in the old building next to the Patriarchal Chambers raised the alarm. This administrative building was used as housing for several years under Stalin. One of the apartments on the second floor was once occupied by the People's Commissar of the NKVD Yezhov... The duty officer's post was located right in the hallway of the former Yezhov "apartments". Closer to midnight, a security officer suddenly clearly heard someone's footsteps on the stairs leading down, then the jingling of a key in the lock... The front door creaked as it swung open, then it closed with a light thud - someone walked out of the building into the square . But who? The vigilant watchman pressed the panic button on the remote control and rushed after the unknown violator of the regime. I jumped out onto the porch - a few meters from the house one could see a small figure in a long overcoat and cap, well known from old photographs... The ghost of the notorious security officer suddenly turned and... slowly disappeared into the air, as if merging with the whitish walls of the Filaretovsky belfry. The disembodied incarnation of Yezhov appeared several more times in the same area of the Kremlin - near former place residence of one of Stalin’s most terrible associates, but the ghost of the “great leader of all times and peoples” never appeared among the ghosts “registered” in the capital! But the phantom of Vladimir Ilyich, they say, was seen more than once in the corridors of old Kremlin palaces.
An incomprehensible phenomenon was noted in one of the summer nights 1950, not far from the Spassky Gate, near the Konstantino-Eleninskaya Tower, which was used in the 17th century as a prison and torture chamber. According to the stories of a Kremlin cadet on duty here, he suddenly discovered a dark spot on the masonry of the wall, which gradually expanded and seemed to flow down. The young security officer risked getting closer and even touched this “new formation.” He felt something sticky under his fingers. In the flashlight it looked like blood. The cadet did not immediately report this phenomenon to his superiors, deciding to check everything again already at sunlight. However, by morning there was no trace of that terrible stain left on the tower.
From time immemorial, the Moscow Kremlin was not only a symbol of sovereign power, but also a place about which legends were made. Not all of them arose out of nowhere. Many are based on real documents, reports and notes of service people. And hundreds of years of archeology have not given up hope of penetrating the secrets of the dungeons.
They tried to explore them three times, and each time the excavations were 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 clerk of the Great Treasury Vasily Makariev, who in 1682, on the orders of Princess Sophia, went down into the secret passage leading from the Tainitskaya tower to the Sobakina (Corner Arsenal) and allegedly saw chambers filled with 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 a gallery that needed to be excavated, and they even gave him soldiers, but there was a danger of collapse, and the work was stopped. Six years later, Osipov returned to the search by decree of Peter I. The sexton was assigned prisoners for work, but the search was not crowned with success. In the Arsenalnaya corner, Osipov found the entrance to the dungeon, which was flooded with water from a spring. Five meters later he came across an Arsenal pillar, and breaking it in the middle, he ran into the rock.
Ten years later, he carried out excavations inside the Kremlin to “intercept” Makaryev’s move, but was again defeated.
Shcherbatov's attempt
The story continued in 1894. The case was picked up by the official of special assignments, Prince Nikolai Shcherbatov. In the Nabatnaya Tower, he found the entrance to a walled-up gallery leading to the Konstantin-Eleninskaya Tower. A counter vaulted corridor 62 meters long was found in the Konstantino-Eleninskaya Tower. At the end of the gallery, behind the brickwork, they found a cache of cannonballs. Later, Shcherbatov dismantled the floor in Nabatnaya and found a passage leading to this hiding place from the other side.
While exploring the Corner Arsenal Tower, Shcherbatov, like Osipov, was unable to penetrate further.
Then the prince decided to break through the underground gallery from 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. From the second chamber a low tunnel began, which went into the wall.
Under the Borovitskaya Tower, Shcherbatov found a chapel, a dungeon under a diversion arch, 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 ramp under fire.
Spring
After the revolution, the Bolsheviks came to power and immediately became concerned about the security of the citadel. They confiscated photographs of the passages from Shcherbatov, filled up the well in the Tainitskaya tower, and walled up the lower chambers in the Trinity. After a Red Army soldier fell underground in the courtyard of the government building in the fall of 1933, archaeologist Ignatius Stelletsky was invited to explore the underground. At one time, he put forward a version that the well of the Tainitskaya Tower was once dry, and there were passages coming from it.
His excavations of the “Osipovsky” passage under Corner Arsenalnaya led to discoveries. They found an unloading arch under the wall and opened an exit to the Alexander Garden, which was immediately walled up. But then Stelletsky ran into a boulder. He believed that the passage further was free of earth, but the scientist was prohibited from excavating and ordered to clear the dungeon of the Corner Arsenal to the bottom. It turned out that the spring, which kept flooding 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 from the late 15th century, and stone cannonballs. A spillway was installed at the bottom of the well, which was supposed to protect the container from overflowing. After it was cleared, the flooding problems stopped.
In addition to archaeologists, builders also made discoveries. In 1930, on Red Square, they found an underground passage in which several skeletons in armor were found. At a depth of five meters, it went from the Spasskaya Tower towards the Execution Place and had brick walls and a wrought iron vault. The passage was immediately covered with earth.
In 1960, having noticed a microscopic crack in the Lenin Mausoleum, architects began to find out the reason and found an underground passage under the mausoleum as tall as a man at a depth of 15 meters.
In June 1974, archaeologists discovered an internal passage near the Middle Arsenal Tower. Behind the walling, a staircase from the 15th century, covered with earth, opened up, which could lead to the treasured tunnels. A year earlier, a gallery was found near the Nabatnaya Tower, leading from the Nabatnaya Tower 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 Kremlin territory is large. On April 15, 1882, a cave-in opened in the middle of the road between the Tsar Cannon and the wall of the Chudov Monastery. Three policemen could walk along it abreast. One end of the tunnel rested against the wall of the Chudov Monastery, and the second 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 Annunciation Cathedral. Here in the cathedral, Prince Shcherbatov discovered a hiding place 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, supposedly located in the dungeons between the Annunciation and Archangel Cathedrals, also 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 pit was dug on the site of Borovitsky Hill, in which a whole system of tunnels, rooms and galleries was laid. And only after this the builders began creating the above-ground part of the Kremlin. Then, they say, the dungeon plans were lost or deliberately burned. If we take into account the depth of the cultural layer, which in some places reaches seven to eight meters inside the Kremlin, we can say with confidence that many finds were previously located on the surface of Borovitsky Hill.
True, this does not make the mysteries any less.