None of the Muscovites have ever seen how the leaders of the country got to the stands of the Mausoleum during parades and demonstrations. And this is not surprising. After all, the way there lies along a comfortable tunnel connecting the Kremlin with the tomb of Lenin and many other city objects. In fact, underground Moscow looks like a "leaky" Dutch cheese - all cut up with secret passages...

Historical note: The grandmother of Ivan the Terrible, the famous Byzantine princess Sophia Palaiologos, began to explore underground Moscow. Having married the Russian tsar, she brought with her a dowry of a double-headed eagle - the emblem of Byzantium, which has since become the state emblem of Russia, and her personal library. And in order to preserve the priceless scrolls, she ordered Aristotle Fioravanti, the largest specialist in underground structures, from Europe, and ordered him to build a three-tiered white-stone “safe” near Moscow.

Ivan the Terrible, to match the grandmother, became a big fan of underground romance. A whole army of diggers was already working under him. A web of passages stretched from the Kremlin towards the future Zemlyanoy Val, into a remote forest thicket - now the Red Gate, to the future Myasnitskaya Street ...

Later, a whole network of branches was laid from this gallery under the Menshikov tower, under the "Masonic houses", under a whole scattering of buildings in the triangle Khokhlovka - Solyanka - Vorontsovo field, under the former house of Prince Pozharsky, under the former house of the Secret Chancellery ...

One of the exits of the underground labyrinth from the time of Ivan the Terrible still exists today and is located in the basement of a house on the corner of Herzen Street and Vosstaniya Square.

Our first encounter with the problem of the existence of the underground Moscow kingdom happened quite by accident.

In the lake of one of the capital's parks, all the fish suddenly died. The management of the park indignantly reported: “The underground plant located under the park is again hooligans. From its emergency emissions, not only fish, soon half of Moscow will be bent ... "

The second similar object also surfaced unexpectedly. When asked why at acute shortage places for housing, a huge wasteland was built up with metal garages, the architects explained: “You can’t build anything massive there - it will fall into an underground workshop ...”

And then a natural task arose: to find out what is hidden under the capital's pavements, besides the world-famous Moscow metro? In search of information, we met stalkers - a group of young treasure hunters who, at their own peril and risk, are scouring Moscow dungeons in the hope of finding old coins, icons, books ...

It was from them that we learned many interesting facts about the secret belly of Moscow.

These very young guys consider themselves followers of Stelletsky, a little-known historian and archaeologist in Russia, and use his developments in their searches. Ignatiy Yakovlevich Stelletsky gave more than forty years of his life to the search for the “library of Sophia Paleolog”, or, as it is more often called, “the library of Ivan the Terrible”.

At the beginning of the century, he examined many underground passages of the Kremlin. And after the revolution, he turned to the GPU for permission to search for new dungeons. Such permission was granted to him, but on the condition that he would never and anywhere publish the results of his research without special permission. Stelletsky agreed to this enslaving contract.

He worked with the builders of the subway, studying all the underground corridors that came across on the way of laying subway lines. And all his notes and diaries invariably went into the safe of the state security service ... After all, with Soviet power the underground kingdom of Ivan the Terrible was taken under guardianship of the Bunker Directorate of the KGB.

Bit by bit, the stalkers collected information regarding the ancient secret passages. Along the way, they also learned about the so-called “new buildings”. The employees of the Bolshoi Theater told them about a wide tunnel leading to the Kremlin.

As you know, Stalin liked to hold party conferences at the Bolshoi Theater. During these events, all the props (stands, slogans, etc.) were delivered to the theater by truck through the underground passage. Having estimated where approximately this path should lie, the stalkers tried to penetrate it from the communication tunnels. But they failed, as they were stopped by tightly closed metal doors.

But they entered the underground garage of the building of the former CMEA with ease. The “little trick” helped: you squeeze the alarm contact roller, fix it with something - and go through any door. In principle, those who are not afraid to descend into the “underground world” can get through sewer, cable and other passages into the basement of almost any building in Moscow.

But I must say that it is very unsafe. Stalkers says:

“The womb of Moscow is quite densely populated. First, it was chosen by the homeless. Secondly, mafia groups like to arrange warehouses for illegal products there. And, God forbid, catch their eye! Thirdly, the tunnels are inhabited by feral dogs that prey on rats, on each other, and in general on all living things that come their way. And fourthly, if you inadvertently get into the "closed zone" of the dungeon, then there is a risk of running into a guard's bullet. After all, there, underground, there is something, but there are enough “secret objects”.

An inconspicuous hatch at the bottom of the fountain, right behind the back of the monument in the very center of the capital, hides one of the main secrets of the country. Surprisingly, this entrance is not guarded by anyone. Probably because not everyone, a daredevil, dares to go down into the pitch darkness of the thirty-story abyss along the slimy and rusty brackets of a narrow metal staircase.

And yet there are such people. They said that the entrance to the mysterious system"Metro-2", the lines of which are not indicated on any diagram. Where and where trains with dimmed lights go - one can only guess.

Vladimir Gonik, who worked as a doctor in the Ministry of Defense for six years, claims that these branches serve a grandiose government bunker built in case nuclear war.

How did he know about it? The fact is that his patients were people who performed special missions who were subjected to increased physical and mental stress - pilots, submariners, illegal immigrants who worked abroad ...

From time to time, people with surprisingly pale skin came to him, as if they had not seen the sun for years. Bit by bit, they collected information from their individual phrases and short answers, which eventually formed into a fairly complete picture.

If you believe the words of Tonik, then in the south of the capital, deep underground, a cyclopean structure is hidden, capable of long years give shelter to ten thousand people. Special security and service personnel in perfect order contain underground "streets", "houses", cinemas, gyms with swimming pools...

One of the Moscow newspapers wrote that Boris Yeltsin was simply shocked by visiting a certain underground city, located under a huge wasteland near Vernadsky Avenue. This story surprisingly coincides not only with Tonik's information, but also with the map published in the annual publication of the US Department of Defense "Soviet Armed Forces. 1991".

It depicts three special metro lines connecting the underground point under the Kremlin with suburban and city bunkers. The southwestern underground line runs past Vernadsky Avenue and leads to the Vnukovo government airfield (27 kilometers from Moscow), the southern line ends 60 kilometers from the city in the shelter of the General Staff and the country's leadership, the eastern subway stretches 25 kilometers to the air defense command complex.

And in the American collection "Soviet Armed Forces" for 1988, there is even a diagram of the floors and premises of an underground bunker for the Soviet leadership.

But the bunker security department carefully keeps the secrets of the dungeons from their compatriots. And here's the proof. After the failure of the coup, Prokofiev, the former First Secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee, escaped from the building of the Central Committee of the CPSU through one of these secret passages, and they could not detain him, since even those who were entrusted with this did not know the secrets of the Bunker Department.

However, in recent times the curtain of secrecy that hid the Moscow dungeons began to open slightly under the wind of change. According to the data leaked to the press, it can already be judged that at least fifteen large underground factories interconnected by many kilometers of tunnels.

Journalists have already been allowed into the bunker of the headquarters of the fire department near Smolenskaya Square, the underground ITAR-TASS building under one of the stations, the bunker of the headquarters civil defense under Tverskaya street...

With reluctance, the doors of the heavy doors of the “A” buildings also swung open. Huge nuclear bomb shelters civilian population, began to appear relatively recently - since 1984. Now there are about a hundred of them, and, which is natural in our time, they do not stand idle in anticipation of an unknown war, but regularly serve business.

“Some have underground parking lots for cars,” says V. Lukshin, head of the engineering and technical department of the Moscow Civil Defense Headquarters, “others housed gyms, shops, warehouses ... Not a single one was left without work square meter. And there is even a queue for the use of facilities that are still under construction.”

You can't hide the underground life here - everything is in plain sight. But the "underground city for the government" is still a secret with seven seals. And this is understandable: if the underworld exists, then it can serve ten thousand "chosen ones" only on the condition that millions of "ordinary" people do not know about it!

Irina Tsareva, from the book "Unknown, Rejected or Hidden"

Photo: Arman Zhenikeyev/Rusmediabank.ru

Each ancient Russian city has its own legends about mysterious underground passages, often associated with exciting stories about ghosts and treasures.

Ghosts from the Crypt

They talk about the former Penza Teacher's House at the crossroads of Volodarsky and Kuraev streets. Before the revolution, the building belonged to the Polish church. Under it was a crypt where the clergy were buried.
After the war, NKVD workers tried to explore the dungeons of the building. A dozen armed men descended into the cellar. They returned back, all gray-haired. What happened to them there - no one was told. The next day, workers came and walled up the entrance to the dungeon.

Today, the building houses a commercial firm. The watchmen on duty there claim that at night someone seems to be stomping loudly in the attic, doors slam on their own on the empty upper floors, and sometimes someone’s heavy footsteps are heard behind people’s backs. Turn around and no one...

Visions in the Bee House

The house of the merchant Pchelin on Voznesenskaya Street in the capital of the current Republic of Mari El, Yoshkar-Ola, is considered one of the main city attractions. He owned it in the middle of the XVIII century. merchant Ivan Pchelin. It was said that, in addition to trade, he traded in robbery, which allowed him to become richest man in the town. There were rumors that the merchant brutally tortured the serfs in his large two-story stone house... Many years later, the immured skeleton of a girl was found in the wall of Pchelin's house. Another villainous merchant allegedly laid tunnels under the house, where he hid his treasures acquired by criminal means. They also said that Vanka Pchelin was and knew the devil himself ...

AT different eras Pchelin's house housed the zemstvo court and the treasury. In 1828 the building was given over to the county school, which in 1872 was transformed into a city school. They say that once one of the students was sent to a punishment cell for the night for an offense. And then, when everything was quiet, he heard someone running, dancing and laughing in the neighboring empty rooms ... In addition, there were blows on the door of the punishment cell, as if something heavy was being thrown at it. For some reason, another student went to his class at night and was so frightened of something that he fell down the stairs and crashed to death ...

Strange and terrible things happened to others. So, one teacher, when he was reading in his room late at night, was lifted into the air by an unknown force along with a chair and a book and transferred to the other end of the corridor ...

Different people met in the building dressed in a white cheremisk with a rope around his neck, who allegedly once strangled himself here, being under arrest by sentence zemstvo court. Others saw a golden ball rolling around the rooms, there were also those who heard someone allegedly chopping sugar in empty rooms ...

At the end of the 50s. of the last century, at a crossroads near Pchelin's house, a bus fell into the ground. But then the incident was quickly hushed up. And in 1957. there was a failure of the soil on Karl Marx Street. Former Deputy Director Republican Museum on scientific work, and now an honorary citizen of Yoshkar-Ola Boris Babushkin says: “As a specialist in archeology, I was called to the site of the failure. Going down, we stumbled upon an underground passage. It was about 1.2–1.5 m high, rectangular in shape, and the vault was wooden (obviously not an aquifer, but a pedestrian passage!). We walked five meters along it - we were afraid to go further, the wooden floor had rotted for a long time. In the other direction (in the direction of Pchelin's house), the passage was just as rectangular, but lined with bricks on lime mortar ... ".

Church Treasures and Secret Metro in Orenburg

In the Ural city of Orenburg, near Sovetskaya Street, on the spot where the unfinished shopping complex"Atrium", once there was the Kazan Cathedral. It was built at the end of the 19th century according to the project of the architect Yashchenko in the Byzantine style, modeled on the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

In 1932 the temple was blown up. But the clergy allegedly managed to hide everything and valuables in the dungeon and wall up the passages ... In the place of the old church graveyard, local residents subsequently found, in addition to bones, golden crosses and old coins. There is a lot of talk about underground tunnels in Orenburg, but no one knows exactly where they are located.

They also say that they decided to build a shopping center here for a reason: the businessmen who started the construction expected to find church property. But nothing was found, and the construction stalled.

Also in the very center of Orenburg, on Leninskaya Street (formerly Neplyuevskaya) stands the so-called "House with Lions", built in the early twentieth century. Before the revolution, this house, decorated on the outside with luxurious stucco, and on the inside with paintings on mythological themes, belonged to the lawyer Yevsey Gorodissky, who was famous for his. He allegedly even arranged something like a subway under his dwelling. Along the tunnel that led to the neighboring street (now Pushkinskaya, formerly Orskaya), the lawyer ordered to lay rails along which an electric trolley drove. In this way, his ladies of the heart could enjoy riding, as well as secretly come to and from their beloved (many of them were married, and besides, in this way they could not bump into each other).

Now this building belongs to a nearby hospital, but is not used and is in a dilapidated state. The marble lions at the entrance have long disappeared - they say that in the late 90s some new Russian took them to his mansion ... By the way, you can get into the house from the yard only through the basement. So the legend underground tunnel is most likely true.

"In this small but dramatic chapter, I would like to tell you about where the chests can be stored, which were seen by the clerk of the Great Treasury (Minister of Finance) Vasily Makarov in 1682. This confusing story began in the fall of 1718. At the door of the Preobrazhensky order, the sexton of the Church of John The forerunner on Presnya, Koion Osipov publicly shouted " Sovereign's Word and Delo." This call meant only one thing. A person wants to communicate information of the greatest importance, and all public servants are obliged to ensure that he carries out his intention without any problems. After all, according to the laws of that time, for a false proclamation of the “Word and Deed”, a person could easily be put on a rack of torture and subjected to serious tests. And, apparently, Konon Osipov had strong evidence that his message deserved the closest attention of the authorities.

What did our nimble clerk find out and hasten to tell? Do not know? And I know. He reported to the head of the detective order, Ivan Fedorovich Romodanovsky, that in 1682 (that is, 36 years ago) Princess Sophia (the elder sister of Peter I) sent Vasily Makarov, the deacon of the Great Treasury (who by this time was no longer alive) with a check to the Kremlin dungeons . Why is Sophia, at that time actually governing the country after Streltsy rebellion, sent a deacon to an underground inspection? Konon did not know the answer to this question, but said that V. Makarov went through the underground passage from the Tainitskaya tower to Sobakina through the entire Kremlin. On the way, that is, at a distance of 633 meters, the clerk saw “two stone chambers, lined with chests to the very vaults, those chambers are firmly fortified. Iron doors, iron openings across the chain, large hanging locks, lead seals on wires. Those chambers have one window each, and there are bars in them without shutters.

These “shutterless” bars were needed in order to look through them without opening the doors and make sure that the chests were intact and safe. Which, in fact, did Makariev. For Sophia, it was extremely important to find out for sure - does this move really exist? Can you walk through it? And will it be possible to leave the Kremlin through it in case of emergency? After all, she was brought up in the Kremlin and therefore could only know by hearsay about the existence and safety of the saving passage. When Makariev reported that the move was in good order, and the chests were still locked and chained, she calmed down and ordered him not to go into the hiding place without special instructions. Sofya Alekseevna ruled from 1682 to 1689. Prince Romodanovsky heeded Osipov's denunciation and ordered to open the basement and inspect the hiding place. He entrusted the inspection to Kono-nu himself, giving him the clerk Pyotr Chicherin with a team of 10 soldiers led by the captain to help him. “And this clerk examined that entrance and informed them, clerks, that there is such an exit, only it is littered with earth. And they gave him a captain and 10 soldiers, and they dug up this hiding place and cleaned out two ladders and the earth began to fall from above, and this captain sees that the course has gone straight and sent a note to bring boards under that land so that the land of people does not fall asleep. And the clerks didn’t let people go and didn’t order them to go further, to this day it has not been investigated.

For Konon Osipov himself, everything seemed to end well on this. Let us now take a look at any picture or grave in the Kremlin, where the Tainitskaya Tower is clearly visible. Built by the Italian Anton Fryazin in 1485, the tower had a huge basement. A dry well was arranged in that basement, which, if necessary, could be filled through an underground source, separated for a time from the river by a steel damper. In the second half of the basement, a secret entrance to a kind of dry dungeon was arranged. It is known from the accounting inventory that by 1647 the steps leading there were broken, and at least fifty stones fell from the walls and from the vault. Themselves two-Rn were closed and littered.

For the time being, Woodham considers that there was a hiding place in fact, and from Him there was a certain direct passage towards the steep hill on which the cathedrals were located: the Assumption, Archangel and Annunciation. This move seems to be very ancient, probably built at the same time as the tower itself. But itself ?, the beginning of the underground passage was constantly destroyed for the simple reason that a passing road passed from above it (along the Kremlin wall from the inside and in the same place in the Taynitskaya tower there were gates through which heavy wagons and carts drove). From the resulting vibration, the masonry was loosened, and stones and bricks constantly fell out of it. It was the most dangerous place, and whether it survived intact is unknown. But then everything was just wonderful. The tunnel went under the hill, turning into a deep passage. ground water were far away, no vibration and noise was observed there. In the area of ​​​​the Cathedral Square, it was already at least 25 meters from the surface of the earth. A straight underground highway 160 meters long led from the cellars of the Assumption Cathedral directly to the well, which could easily be filled with water from the Moskva River.

From there, it could be safely delivered to the besieged garrison, which, you see, was much more convenient than dragging it up a steep hill in buckets under fire. In addition, if two capital storage facilities were built in the depths of the hill, then only the Moscow sovereign himself could give the task for the construction of such an expensive object. Now let's figure out who exactly from the kings own underground treasures? Let's start with this. Let's remember what exactly the clerk Vasily Makariev saw? Yes, yes, that's it. Iron doors, heavy locks, chains and locks on them, and chests, and locks in them too ... Since there are so many locks, there must be as many keys! Right? Now it only remains for us to find out which of the Russian tsars owned such a large bunch of keys and literally do not part with it. Since the Tainitskaya Tower, and with it the dry well and tunnel, were built in 1485, only three kings could know about the existence of a half-earth cache (recall the years of their reign):

John Vasilyevich (1462-1505)

Vasily Ioannovich (1505-1533)

John Vasilyevich the Terrible (1533-1584)

These were all serious personalities who had something to hide. But years have passed. 62 years after the death of Ivan 1

Watchers report that the doors are clogged, the steps are broken and everything is covered with stone. This clearly indicates that, starting from Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich and further up to the first Romanov, no one used this move and it slowly collapsed over time. But in the family of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (from 1645 to 1676) they knew about this move, and when Tsarevna Sofya Alekseevna took the reins of government into her own hands, she immediately sent a trusted person to see what was happening with the house passage, and at the same time find out where he was, Strictly speaking, VeDet. And, most likely, when he, having returned from intelligence, reported on the discovered vaults, she forbade anyone else to appear there in order to avoid unnecessary dissemination of information. Only two knew: Sophia herself and Vasily Makarov. In the event of a leak, it was very clear who should be beheaded. One must think, the clerk was silent like a fish. Now a little about Kremlin geography and trigonometry. We found out that from the Tainitskaya Tower the underground passage went in a straight line, exactly under the cliff at the Archangel Cathedral. The distance was 20 fathoms, or 43 meters. In those distant years (during the time of Ivan the Terrible), the southern wall of the Archangel Cathedral was almost at the edge. But then, at the end of the 17th century, a travel road was sprinkled, and behind it a sidewalk and a platform with two slopes to the Tainitsky gates. The mainland is located south side cathedral at a height of 3.5 meters from the modern surface. Ivanovskaya (Cathedral) Square was also filled in, and the mainland now lies at a depth of 5 to 9 meters below modern level earth.

A hole five meters deep was dug in the floor of the Assumption Cathedral in 1853, but neither the basement nor the mainland pound was found! But a brick floor was discovered, built back in 1326 under Ivan Kalita. This floor was subsequently covered with debris during the construction of a new temple in 1505-1509. And then the floors were laid white stone. But even they were filled up one and a half meters under Alexei Mikhailovich, and under him a third floor was made of cast-iron tiles. At the same time, it was established that there were no cellars under either the Assumption Cathedral or the Archangel Cathedral. But still cellars were discovered at the southern wall of the Archangel Cathedral. Just in 1835. Cellars are brick, deaf, 3.5 meters high, 12 meters long and 6.4 meters wide. The cellars were separated by a wall with two passages, and a staircase was built against the sacristy of the Annunciation Cathedral with access to the surface. Just from this basement a corridor led to other dungeons, and at the end of it an iron door was built, a measure below the height of an average person, with a huge padlock. The door itself was half covered with debris from a collapsed vault. They tried to open it, but the door was so skewed and jammed that it was not possible to do it.

Where the passage from the door led further remained unclear. It is believed that she led to the cellars of the Treasury Palace. Storerooms, gyudvals and glaciers were built under almost all the buildings of the old building. The dungeons of the Chudov Monastery were equipped with double cellars, and the lower cellar was at a depth of 8 meters. Many dungeons are known: the cellars of the Judgment Chamber, the Treasury, the Ambassadorial, Local and Rogue orders. The glaciers of Sytny Dvor and others were close to the surface and were known to many for their service.

These cellars were not secret at all, and no one would hide treasures in them. More deep secrets required deeper burials and undoubtedly could be associated precisely with deep-lying tunnels. Because it was these tunnels that were one of the main military facilities of the Kremlin, along with walls, long-range cannons and an arsenal. And most importantly, only according to them the first persons of the state could leave the besieged fortress in case of mortal danger. That is why all the doors leading to the tunnels were so strong and so carefully locked with invincible locks. It would be interesting to find out who kept the keys to these locks? The lost tunnel was 33 meters in size, and a horse and cart could freely pass through it. He led from well to well, which is quite justified from a military point of view. Agree that two vital water sources for such a powerful fortress as the Kremlin, it is always better than just one. Suppose that, first of all, water was to be delivered through these tunnels to the royal chambers. And the royal, living quarters and Basil III and Ivan the Terrible were located on the site of ancient palaces, where the Terem Palace was built in 1635-1636. Its lower floors have been preserved, but have undergone numerous alterations and rebuildings. By the way, it was there that the restorers unbricked the entrance to some kind of underground gallery, but they managed to walk only 47 meters along it, after which they ran into a blockage.

Next to the Terem Palace is the ancient building of the Faceted Chamber, and it was built in 1487-1491 almost simultaneously with the construction of the Taynitskaya and Sobakina towers, completed in 1492. All this was built by one architect - Peter Antonio Solario. And it seems that it was these towers that were connected by a wide convenient tunnel. On the plan of the Kremlin in 1739, there are even straight lines drawn by someone unknown, going from the Taynitskaya tower to three other towers: Sobakina, Middle Arsenal and Troitskaya. All of them, one way or another, pass under the Cathedral Square, and the line going to the Trinity Tower passes directly under the Terem Palace. The hunch that one of the half-terrestrial passages was marked in this way was brilliantly confirmed in 1913: in 1913, at the Red Entrance of the Faceted Chamber, an underground hall5 was found heading towards the Spasskaya Tower. But it turned out to be a blockage. Archaeologist Ignatiy Yakovlevich Stelletsky, who was also engaged in excavations in the Dog Tower in 1934, came to the conclusion that the underground passage through which Vasily Makarov passed goes from the Arsenal Tower, along the Kremlin wall, presumably to the level of the Trinity Tower, and from it turns left and then continues to the Taynitskaya tower.

It must be admitted that the section of the passage that connected the Tainitskaya Tower with the Annunciation Cathedral on the plan is most likely completely littered. It was covered with subsiding soil precisely for the reason that in 1770 large earthworks were carried out directly above it, related to the construction of the palace. Work was stopped when the southern wall of the Archangel Cathedral suddenly cracked. And its southern wall, we note to ourselves, is closest to the Tainitskaya tower and, therefore, to the place where at least two underground passages originated from. ”An interesting turn of events! But let's go further. The section of the passage from the Terem Palace to the Trinity Tower is also, most likely, completely collapsed. Let's not forget that it was over it that the Grand Kremlin Palace was built. But the section of the dungeon under the Annunciation Cathedral, the Palace of Facets and the Terem Palace itself, going at a depth of about 16-26 meters, has every chance of surviving, since no construction work has been carried out on this site for almost five hundred years. So that is why a completely serviceable segment of the passage was found, stretching both under the palace and the floor of the Faceted Chamber. Imagine now how exactly that unforgettable underground journey of the deacon Vasily Makarov took place.

So he went down to the basement of the Tainitskaya tower, approached the powerful door and kicked the stones that prevented it from opening (collapsed from the arch) with his foot. Then he went down the steps of the stone stairs and saw a wide passage leading into the darkness. He lit a thick candle with a flint and, saying “Lord, save and have mercy” several times, moved into the depths of the damp dungeon. Having passed 50 sazhens, he found himself just under the Annunciation Cathedral, and after advancing a little more, and under the Faceted Chamber. Soon, to his right, he saw two black semicircular doors and did not fail to inspect them. Each of the doors was locked with two padlocks and, in addition, entangled in powerful chains, almost as thick as a hand. It was hard to see through the tiny window, which was covered with iron bars, but, having stuck a candle through it, the clerk froze in surprise. The dense rows of chests stacked on top of each other, heaped under the very vaults of a strange vault, struck his imagination. The chests were covered with age-old dust and could well have been lying untouched since the time of Ivan IV the Terrible himself.

And what was in those chests that were hidden? The question is not as simple as it seems at first glance. So, Ignatius Stedletsky believed that those chests contained books of a huge library, which began to be collected long before the accession of John Vasilyevich. Well, the version is quite viable, since there were really a lot of books, they were large, and therefore they occupied the appropriate volume. Other pundits believe that the vaults contained archival books, of which there have been many over the centuries. Perhaps this is true. But it is also likely that out-of-fashion clothes, outdated jewelry and other rubbish were stored there, which seems not to be needed, but it is still a pity to throw it in the trash. And, of course, it is very likely that it was there that Ivan the Terrible (or maybe one of his predecessors) kept personal items, such as gifts from foreign ambassadors and sovereigns from neighboring kingdoms and principalities.

Then it was customary to give such valuable gifts that, with their cost and rarity, were able to completely defeat the gifted subject. You do understand: good gift the most important person in the state - and half the battle, consider it done. Russian corruption out, it turns out, what powerful roots it has^, not like our feeble democracy. Let us recall in this connection that it was Ivan IV who, more than anyone else, loved (or was forced to) travel for a long time. It was extremely inconvenient to carry all the books, clothes and valuables accumulated over many years, and therefore it was quite logical to hide them in a secret basement behind seven locks. No one had access there, and even with access, it was very problematic to break so many locks easily and quickly. But as time went on, the dungeon was slowly collapsing, and even with all the keys and permits, getting into it became more and more difficult.

Take the same Konon Osipov. In some unknown way, the clerk, who found out about the journey of Vasily Makarov, tried three times to break into the coveted dungeon from the side of the Tainitskaya Tower, but each time failed either because of blockages or because of direct prohibitions of higher "comrades". They tried to poke their head from the side of the Arsenal tower, but they also failed there due to the fact that the passage was damaged by the buildings of the arsenal complex. The last attempt also failed, although ditches were dug in four places! But now you and I know that the Kremlin underground passages were laid so deep that it is simply impossible to get to them with some kind of ditches. Many, many years passed, and new people took up the old business. AND I. Stelletsky tried to get into the legendary underground passage from the side of the Arsenal tower. He discovered it and even began to clear it, but in connection with the murder of SM, Kirov in 1934, all work was stopped and was no longer resumed. I mean, that's what we think. But after all, a small search group, consisting of 2-3 specialists and ordinary soldiers of “conscripts”, who were used as free labor, could well work in the Kremlin. For many decades, this group could dig up anything, without reporting to anyone and without reporting to anyone. The whole question is who led and directed this group? Only this person or a group of people, who have the opportunity to do whatever they want in the Kremlin, could well clear and restore all the ancient dungeons. Therefore, we will not worry so much about the treasures lost over the centuries. If ever in the past the Kremlin authorities set themselves the task of finding the "chests of Konon Osipov" at any cost, then rest assured that the task has long been completed. What happened to the treasures found? - you ask. I will answer this way: If the treasures of Ivan the Terrible were found, then, of course, they were immediately used for their intended purpose. In other words, they now adorn someone's modest, but almost royal life.

Scheme of the undergrounds of Moscow When a thin crack appeared on the building of the Mausoleum in the early 1960s, in order to find out the reasons for its occurrence, it was decided to explore the bowels next to it. What was the surprise of the researchers when, at a depth of 16 meters, they stumbled upon an arch of a secret passage lined with oak. It led from the Mausoleum to the Kremlin and Kitai-gorod. It is possible that the information was not made available to the public, the passage was quickly concreted. But rumors about the dungeons under the Mausoleum still swept the city ...

It should be noted that underground Moscow causes huge interest, and at the same time gives rise to many rumors and legends. No one knows for sure about dungeons and secret passages. But they are constantly talked about. Underground Moscow is a huge mystery. They say that this is a whole city, and diggers count 12 of its levels.

And researchers argue that the bowels of the capital resemble a termite mound or a head of Dutch cheese: by the beginning of the 19th century, the center of Moscow had already been dug up in all directions. And the 20th century added new ones to the paved passages, along which metro trains passed, and communications stretched.

Why does Moscow need dungeons?

Although the secret passages known to us date back to the 15th-17th centuries, the underground space of the city was used in ancient times. In some dungeons they arranged hiding places and kept valuables, church relics, and weapons. Others became necropolises. Third, they kept prisoners. Often arranged and underground cellars. Moscow often burned, and such caches made it possible to save valuables and food supplies from the fire. Moscow alchemists and counterfeiters set up their laboratories and workshops underground.

But underground passages were of particular importance in war time! In the towers of Kitay-gorod, for example, there were dungeons-rumors and passages for secret sorties. And the underground galleries of the Novodevichy and Simonov monasteries led to ponds for hidden water intake in case of a siege.

Some caches were sheathed with boards or massive logs, the walls of others were lined with white stone or red brick. It was possible to go down to some passages only through the cellars, and to others - to get on the stairs arranged in the walls of the chambers and towers. Some dungeons were filled with water and suffocating gas, and some were almost entirely filled with sand and silt.

Exploration of the underground passages of Moscow.

Caches near Moscow have long attracted attention, but only a few attempts to explore them are known. And yes, something got in the way all the time.

For example, in the 17th century, on the orders of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, master Azancheev repeatedly tried to build an underground passage under the Moscow River. Everything was unsuccessful, although soon the nobility was suddenly granted to the master-man. And about the tunnel under the river was no longer mentioned.

And during the time of Peter I, sexton Konon Osipov asked to be allowed to scout "two chambers full of chests." It was assumed that the famous Liberia, the library of Ivan the Terrible, could be hidden there. The king allowed the study, but the sexton "did not find any luggage." And soon he died altogether.

At the end of the 19th century, Prince N.S. Shcherbatov, but the First World War prevented him.

"Underground Moscow" by Stelletsky.

AT Soviet time Ignatius Stelletsky, an enthusiastic archaeologist who devoted his whole life to searching for the book treasures of Ivan the Terrible, tried to explore the Kremlin's dungeons. He repeatedly applied to various organizations, raising the question of the use of ancient underground structures and referring to the experience of Paris, Rome, London:

Dungeons of the Kremlin Everywhere and everywhere the dungeons are brought by time and people into a state of, if not complete, then very great destruction. The Kremlin did not escape the common fate, and therefore one cannot deceive oneself with the thought that it is enough to open one passage and it is already easy to pass along it under the entire Kremlin, if not under the whole of Moscow. In fact, a journey through underground Moscow is a jump with obstacles, and very significant ones, the elimination of which will require a lot of effort, time and money. But all this is nothing in comparison with the possible ideal result: underground Moscow cleaned, restored and illuminated by arc lamps would be an underground museum of scientific and any interest...

Stelletsky's appeals remained unanswered, all his findings and discoveries were concreted or conserved according to the principle "whatever happens." And soon Stelletsky's research was completely banned: the increased interest in the dungeons was interpreted as a conspiracy against the Soviet regime.

The final chord of this story was the 1949 law "On Subsoil", which declared the country's subsoil to be the exclusive property of the state. It was then that Stelletsky's discoveries were classified.

And there were many discoveries. For example, the archaeologist warned that the building of the Lenin Library could collapse if the “historical voids” under it were not explored. And the cracks and faults were not long in coming. Similar deformations appeared in the buildings of the Bolshoi and Maly theaters, the Metropol. And the Historical Museum, according to Stelletsky, was also threatened by quicksand. Perhaps that is why the monument to Georgy Zhukov is sunk so deeply into the ground like a pedestal: it serves as an additional support for the building, like forest plantations that strengthen the slopes of a ravine.

Stelletsky's research was remembered during the years of Khrushchev's "thaw" and even a commission was created to search for the library. But with the coming to power of Brezhnev, the Kremlin was closed to scientists, and diaries containing a documentary history of the royal library were stolen from Stelletsky's widow.

Where are underground passages found in Moscow?

The authorities of the capital admit that there is no map of the underground passages of Moscow. There are diagrams drawn based on the results of research by diggers, according to the memoirs of Stelletsky, according to archival materials ... but even their authenticity cannot be vouched for.

Perhaps this was done so that data on caches would not become available to the enemy side in wartime. Therefore, when listing known hiding places and underground passages, one always has to say the word “possibly”.

It is possible that underground passages connect the Tainitskaya, Nikolskaya and Spasskaya towers of the Kremlin. Perhaps the passage from the Senate Tower leads to Kitai-Gorod, to the Staro-Nikolskaya Pharmacy. Perhaps there is a hiding place under the chambers of Averky Kirillov. Perhaps you can go down to Myasnitskaya and Lubyanka in a secret passage. Perhaps, from Lubyanka you can quietly go to the infamous House on the Embankment. Perhaps there are underground galleries under the Sukharev Tower, under Bruce's house on Prospekt Mira, under the building English Club on Tverskaya and in the courtyard of Yusupov's house. Perhaps in Tsaritsyno there is a many-kilometer chain of dungeons. Possibly underground. the Church of the Resurrection of the Word in Barashy is connected with the Apraksinsky Palace. Perhaps it will be possible to go underground from the Kremlin directly to Pashkov's house.

Or maybe it's all fiction. So, for example, a certain A. Ivanov, who published an article in 1989 about the dungeons of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, assured that this particular underground passage leads to Liberia. But in fact, he led into the river and turned out to be a drainage system ...

Underground bunkers in Moscow.

There is no doubt that the 20th century added several mysterious dungeons to Moscow. These are government bunkers that were created in case nuclear strike. Three government bunkers are known for sure in Moscow: on Taganka, in Izmailovo (two car tunnels go from it to the Kremlin and to the area of ​​​​the Sokolniki metro station, and you can get into the bunker itself from the Partizanskaya station) and to Kuntsevo (there too goes road tunnel from the public reception of the Ministry of Defense on Myasnitskaya).

O underground bunkers Moscow tell a lot of interesting things:

Under our feet - under the asphalt, under the thickness of the earth - there is a whole giant dead city built for survival. In its multi-story buildings - air-conditioned, expensive carpets on the floors, electronic clocks that measure time with second accuracy, untouched sheets of paper on the tables, special compartments with beds lined with clean linen. "The bomb shelter is in conservation mode," the military says. It is unlikely that anyone other than them would dare to call these underground mansions bomb shelters. Bomb shelters for mere mortals are completely different ... Elite houses built in Stalin's time, state institutions, factories, some shops are connected by a system of so-called potterns - long underground corridors at a five-meter depth leading to the actual bomb shelters ... Potterns are connected by small channels with water supply and sewer wells , which in case of blockages, destruction will serve as emergency exits. Theoretically, it is possible to get into the front of an administrative building from an ordinary hatch ...

Digging of the first posterns began before the war and continued actively until 1953, the year of Stalin's death. They built, as it was then supposed, reliably: not a single transition has yet collapsed. The scheme of their location is secret, only the Ministry of Emergency Situations has complete maps. There are especially many underground corridors inside the hills on which Moscow stands: near Taganka, Kitay-Gorod, under Sparrow Hills. An all-encompassing, branched system of posterns is the first, upper level of the underground defensive structures of our city.

Their second level began to be made after 1953. The buildings of the Central Committee, the KGB, the Ministry of Defense grew deeper and deeper into the ground - sometimes up to five floors. No money was spared... These comfortable buildings, like in a real city, are connected by "streets" and "lanes". So, from Lubyanka there is a direct underground passage to the Kremlin, and the tunnel leading to it from the building of the Central Committee on Staraya Square is so wide that you can drive through it by car ...

At the end of Khrushchev's rule, the danger of nuclear war seemed much more real than it is now. Then there were projects of the third level of underground structures. They began to implement them in the early 70s. ... the so-called underground monorail. His first route was from the Central Committee to the Kremlin. Now it is more than 600-800 meters and passes mainly under the Kremlin and in close proximity to it ... And modern shelters, going underground for 8-10 floors, could easily qualify for five stars in terms of comfort, with rooms of the "presidential" level ".

Riddles and secrets of Metro-2.

But if it is known for sure about underground bunkers, then it is still impossible to say with certainty whether there is a special. metro or "Metro-2". Some say it exists, and there are even witnesses who have seen these mysterious government lines. Others claim that this is just a bike. Yes, and the name "Metro-2" was given with the light hand of the magazine "Spark".

The Metro-2 scheme Adds fuel to the fire that the first information about these metro tunnels appeared in 1992 in one of the AiF issues, where they talked about a certain cleaning lady in the KGB, who was taken to special facilities by special metro lines. The editors responded by stating that this metro system was described in the US Department of Defense's 1991 annual edition of the Soviet Armed Forces and even published a simplified diagram. It showed that, for example, from the Kremlin it was possible to get to the Domodedovo airport and the Bor forest boarding house with a bunker for the government and the General Staff.

And here is what Vadim Mikhailov, head of the Digger-Spas service, says about the government metro:

Of course, the secret "Metro-2" exists, we diggers have not only seen it hundreds of times, but also explored many sections of it. We got on it to Ramenok. However, today a part of Metro-2, in the area of ​​​​Arbatskaya Square, has received an additional status of secrecy, now there is no way to penetrate there. And today Metro-2 is being built, but at a snail's pace - as always, there is no money. However, the secret metro is only part of underground Moscow. In total, there are 12 levels of communications in it (these are pipes, collectors, mines, etc.). The maximum inhabited depth is 840 meters, there are military bunkers there. They would have dug deeper, but granite rocks go further.

Underground rivers do not have muslin banks, and secret passages are dangerous and difficult to pass. But underground Moscow has its own special romance. Of course, the dungeons of the capital are not fully explored. But what is explored is not open to all eyes. Scientists admit that even the secret passages of the Kremlin have not yet been studied. And now, when the Kremlin towers are being restored, underground Moscow can reveal one of its secrets, which will either excite the public, or hide under the heading "Top Secret" for a long time.

But they say that once in the metropolitan underground labyrinths, it is easy to get lost among the many galleries, passages, wells, halls, walled doors and flooded passages.

And perhaps somewhere here, very close, the famous library of Ivan IV the Terrible is hidden and, perhaps, someday it will be given into the hands of a successful dungeon explorer.

Caches and underground structures of the Kremlin cathedrals, palaces and other buildings

The author of the book suggests starting a journey through the dungeons of the Kremlin buildings from Cathedral Square, where majestic churches rise: the Assumption, Blagoveshchensky and Arkhangelsk. “Three churches shrouded in secrets: three famous Kremlin cathedrals - like an old-fashioned Easter cake with raisins, equipped with secrets,” I. Ya. Stelletsky wrote about them.

What secrets do the ancient Kremlin cathedrals keep?

In the Assumption Cathedral, the creator of which is Aristotle Fioravanti and whose construction dates back to 1476-1479, at the end of the last century, two caches were discovered, but ... in the ground part of the building. The first was in the altar, where, at a height of one meter from the floor, two small holes led into the hiding place, sealed with wooden plugs painted in the color of the wall. Stelletsky believed that the church treasury was kept here. But the architect K. M. Bykovsky called the second cache a treasury. In a report on the restoration of the Assumption Cathedral, he wrote: “The upper part of the eastern wall above the arch of the middle altar ledge does not represent a solid masonry, but two walls, one brick thick: the outer, covered with murals, and the inner, with a space between them 15 inches wide and a length of 9 arshins 2.5 inches with a height of 4 arshins 12 inches. This space is blocked along the length of the arch, and the floor is lined with bricks. Two round holes at a height of one arshin 10 inches from the floor, opening into the altar, were sealed with wooden plugs.

With the greatest probability, it can be assumed that this void was left in the wall in order to lighten the load on the arch supporting the wall as much as possible. Another official appointment presents us with an empty space found at the base of the middle dome: we probably see here the treasury, which, according to the chronicle, was arranged by Fioravanti during the construction of the cathedral. This round corridor, covered with stone slabs on the inside of the domed wall, could have access through the domed window and a hatch in the tiled corridor.

In ancient times, such storage facilities were often arranged in church buildings. There was a hiding place in the altar, for example, in the Church of the Ascension in Barashy (XVII century). There were caches in the side dome of St. George's Cathedral of St. George's Monastery in Novgorod (XII century). Medieval churches and cathedrals were often connected by underground galleries to civil structures and military fortifications. Sometimes these secret passages even led out of the city or fortress. Archaeologists have discovered similar caches near St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, in the Church of the Annunciation in Novgorod, in the Church of the White Trinity in Tver, etc. Church of Metropolitan Macarius. On the way, some of the people suffocated, because "there was a smoky spirit heavy and the heat is great." Monks 'start it ( metropolitan.- T.B.) release from the cache, tying it with a hutch ( reins.- T.B.) on a cut to the Moscow River and the metropolitan interrupted his life and crashed and barely rested.

Stelletsky believed that the passage from the Assumption Cathedral led to the Tainitskaya Tower, and the Metropolitan was lowered into the same well, which has already been described. This cache has not yet been found, just as no news (except for the above) has been found about it in the annals. Only once, when talking about the construction of the Assumption Cathedral, did the chronicler indicate that Aristotle dug ditches for the cathedral 2 sazhens (4 meters), and in “other places even deeper.” But it is unlikely that this remark can serve as proof of the construction of an underground passage. In 1934, while working in the Kremlin, I. Ya. Stelletsky met with one of the employees, who told him about the secret passage between the Assumption Cathedral and the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles. The latter, like the Patriarchal Chambers, was built in the middle of the 17th century by order of Patriarch Nikon, but the lower part of the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles belongs to the Church of the Three Saints. erected at the end of the 16th century. Under Nikon, in the underground part of the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles, handwritten and printed books brought from Athos by the monk Arseny Sukhanov were kept. The Church of the Three Hierarchs, and then the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles were home churches of Russian patriarchs from Job to Adrian. The secret passage could be built by any patriarch (except for Hermogenes, no construction was carried out under him due to the invasion of the Poles). But if we recall that in the 1920s in the New Jerusalem Monastery, built through the efforts of Nikon, a tunnel was discovered connecting the skete of the patriarch and the main cathedral of the monastery, then we can assume that the underground passage from the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles to the Assumption Cathedral was also arranged on the initiative of the active patriarch . So far, no exact indication of where the entrance to the cache is located has been found in Stelletsky's papers, and if so, then the passage from the Cathedral of the Twelve Apostles to the Assumption Cathedral is one of the versions, no more.

Let us now turn to the Annunciation Cathedral, built in 1484-1489 by craftsmen from Pskov. In the book “Monuments of Moscow Antiquity”, I. M. Snegirev recalled: “During the digging of the foundation in 1840 for the new palace, a secret passage, brick and white stone cellars and spoi under the former palace, four underground caches stretching from the Faceted Chamber to Cathedral of the Annunciation, the foundations of former stone churches, an oak palisade in many places on the mainland, stone coffins and piles of human skeletons near the Savior on Bor and Teremov. These silent and at the same time important evidence served as a confirmation of previous guesses and an occasion for new considerations: for the ground Kremlin is explained by the underground.

The Cathedral of the Annunciation had several ground and underground caches. Here is how one of them A.P. Pavlinov described in the History of Russian Architecture:

“Under the choirs, in the arches thrown from the pillars of the temple to the western part of the cathedral wall, there were hiding places arranged so that the arches themselves were empty inside. The vaults rested on them and camouflaged their side walls only half a brick thick. [...] These caches had transverse walls, closed with iron doors leading to special hatches at western wall temple. These hatches were closed from above with two stone slabs with rings, and a floor of small diamonds in two colors was laid on them. Thus, the entrances to the caches were completely camouflaged from all sides. So, this is what we need to look for an explanation of the words of Baron Meyerberg, who traveled in 1663, who says that in the Church of the Annunciation, in the upper vault, a treasure is stored, consisting of various dresses and vestments, very richly embroidered with precious stones and diamonds. Tales of this kind about treasuries in other churches on the part of scientists caused attempts to find them, but led to incomprehensible conclusions. In addition to these caches, there is also a trap in the upper aisle of the Archangel Gabriel, perhaps it had the same purpose.

In 1963, the basement of the Cathedral of the Annunciation attracted the attention of researchers. Then, in an interview with the Nedelya newspaper, the chief architect of the Moscow Kremlin Museums, V. I. Fedorov, said: “The basement of the cathedral was specially intended to store the values ​​​​of the Grand Dukes. So far, the northern part of the basement has not been studied, where there are large thicknesses of masonry, the purpose of which may be associated with the construction of special safes. The dimensions of the masonry are such that it can accommodate a small room, and in it - the book collection of Tsar Ivan. We must hope for this also because under Grozny this cathedral was subjected to significant restructuring. A thorough survey carried out by the architects of the Kremlin showed that the 4-meter thickness of the masonry was made up of three walls erected at different times. So the Cathedral of the Annunciation lost one of its secrets. Other secrets have not been revealed to this day. Remains a mystery, for example, the cache discovered by N.S. Shcherbatov during excavations in the center of the lower floor of the cathedral. Under the floor there was a space measuring 1.5x1.5 meters, filled with garbage. At a depth of 0.35 meters, the archaeologist stumbled upon an ancient stone floor, the void under which was also covered with debris, and fragments of pottery and glassware were found in it. oriental origin; a carved ivory plate depicting two monks of Italian work (it was attributed to the 15th century), as well as a copper money of 1737. Shcherbatov never reached the bottom of this volume. Brief notes N.S. Shcherbatov about the course and results of the excavations did not allow at one time to correctly interpret this interesting find. The “ancient stone floor” in the basement of the basement of the Annunciation Cathedral was, apparently, a vault of a hiding place, ”said archaeologist N. S. Shelyapina.

The mystery of the Cathedral of the Annunciation is the mysterious iron door. In 1894, someone told academician A.I. Sobolevsky that one of the cathedral watchmen went down to the underground of the cathedral and found a corridor with a locked door there. Some time later, according to the journal "Archaeological News and Notes ...", N. S. Shcherbatov "inquired with the watchmen, who have lived for many years in the basements of the Annunciation Cathedral, about a corridor with iron doors at the end of it, but no one did not see. [...] The foundation of the lower floor of the cathedral, the oldest white stone masonry, was laid 1.5 arshins below the Cathedral Square, and the brickwork (from the time of Grozny) was 2 arshins and a little lower than the same level.

The watchman's story about the iron door could be one of the "underground" legends of the Kremlin. However, in the same 1894, in an article in Novoye Vremya devoted to the underground Kremlin, this door is mentioned by the author, who took refuge behind the initials M.I.P.: “Speaking of the dungeons at the Archangel Cathedral, Archpriest Lebedev describes one basement that under the bridge road; they ride and walk on its vault; in the latter, a rather wide staircase made of white stone was discovered from under the debris in 1864, which went out to the surface of the earth through a hole hidden on the bridge, later laid with a cast-iron slab and paved with stone. This staircase was cleared of rubble for only fifteen steps and then laid again. The exit from under the shaft, laid outside with a slab, along the stairs went opposite the sacristy of the Annunciation Cathedral, where there were also hiding places. In one of the cellars described, an iron door was opened, a measure below the average height of a person, with a huge padlock; it was covered with rubbish of the arch that had fallen into the corridor on the occasion of the decision in 1835 of a cast-iron lattice from the Arkhangelsk to the Annunciation Cathedral, and the iron door, no doubt, served as a communication with other dungeons.

So, the iron door is not a myth, and it is located somewhere between the Cathedral of the Annunciation and the Archangel. This space, according to the architect V.I. Fedorov, has not been studied at all, and during excavations there may be significant finds here. N. S. Shcherbatov, having laid a trench here, found the walls of the Treasury Yard, built in 1484 by Marco Fryazin to store the grand ducal treasures. The archaeologist was going to determine the depth of laying the foundations of the treasury and excavate its dungeons, from which there should be an exit to the Cathedral of the Annunciation. But this was not possible due to lack of time.

Let us turn to the Archangel Cathedral, the tomb of Moscow princes and tsars, built by Aleviz Novy in 1505-1508. In addition to the basement with a white stone staircase, which was mentioned by M. I. P., other dungeons were found around the cathedral. In 1826, at the southern wall of the cathedral, on the site where the Judgment Hut (chamber) of the Arkhangelsk estate once stood, two large vaulted cellars were discovered, one of them had blocked windows with iron bars and shutters. There were rumors that one of these windows served as a manhole in a secret passage to Borovitskaya tower. In fact, until the 18th century, cellar windows overlooked the Moskva River in the precipice of Borovitsky Hill. In 1773, when the place for the Bazhenov Palace was being cleared, this slope began to slide, and it was necessary to fill it up and build it up, while the windows of the cellars were underground. In the old days, these cellars served as a prison for non-payers of cathedral dues. For some time, the so-called correctional chair was preserved in them - a thick stump of a log, to which a person sitting on it was chained. These dungeons are still intact. Fate judged them to become a necropolis. In 1929, during the destruction of the Ascension Monastery, employees of the Kremlin Museums rescued the sarcophagi with the remains of Moscow princesses and queens and transported them to the dungeons of the Judgment Chamber.

Dungeon plan of the Judgment Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin.

Interestingly, after 1826, everyone forgot about these cellars, and the second time they were “opened” in 1894. In September of the same year, another dungeon was discovered as a failure on the roadway from the Archangel Cathedral to the Borovitsky Gate. N. S. Shcherbatov, who examined the find, told the correspondent of Moskovskie Vedomosti: “At present, it has been found out that this failure leads to an underground chamber with vaults, covered with earth. It is now impossible to determine the size of this chamber. One can only assume that the failure of the vault occurred in its center. The assumption that this dungeon adjoins the recently opened chambers under the pavement ( We are talking about the dungeons of the Judgment Chamber.- T.B.). confirmed. If readers remember, a large chamber was discovered along the passage of Imperial Square opposite the Archangel Cathedral, having up to 16 arshins along the passage and across, towards the slope, more than 7 arshins. In the middle of it were two stone pillars, and in the wall facing the embankment, two windows with iron bars and the same shutters. To the right of this chamber adjoins a small room, which communicated with it through a door. It turned out that from this room in the wall facing the slope. there is a move to the dungeon, over which there was a failure. All these chambers are located approximately 6 arshins from the surface of the pavement. It is difficult to judge in its current form what purpose the newly opened room had. Shcherbatov did not have time to clear this dungeon.

According to the current custodians of the Archangel Cathedral, there are two brick walls in the cellars of the Judgment Chamber, behind which underground passages are quite likely. One, as Shcherbatov determined, leads to a dungeon that he has not cleared. The other is heading towards the Borovitsky Gate. The author of the book came up with the following assumption: the second passage could lead to another dungeon covered with earth, to the very one from which the white stone staircase rises to the sacristy of the Annunciation Cathedral.

Four caches have already been mentioned that connected the Cathedral of the Annunciation with the Palace of Facets, built in 1487-1491 by Marco Fryazin and Pietro Solari. In 1894, N. S. Shcherbatov opened the floor in the Faceted Chamber in the hope, as one might suppose, of finding traces of hiding places, about which I. M. Snegirev wrote. But the work started was curtailed as soon as the excavations under the Trinity Tower began. In 1913, during earthworks near the Red Porch of the Faceted Chamber, an underground gallery was discovered. She walked past the Ivan the Great Bell Tower in the direction of the Spassky Gates. “What this passage served,” wrote the Novoe Vremya newspaper, “or, rather, the vaulted underground gallery, it is impossible to determine at the moment. However, Kremlin experts, judging by the insignificant height of the passage, only half the height of a person, and the presence of petrified silt at the bottom, tend to think that it served as a channel for filling the live-fish pond of the “quietest” Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich.

In the book “The Home Life of Russian Tsars in the 16th and 17th Centuries”, I.E. Zabelin pointed out the existence of two ponds in the Upper and Lower Embankment Gardens, but water was supplied to them from the Vodovzvodnaya Tower through lead pipes. The gallery has not been examined by archaeologists, so it is difficult to judge what it really was. I. Ya. Stelletsky expressed the following version: the gallery was a secret passage, once turned into a sewer. As an example, he cited an underground passage opened during the laying of a private house near St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. This passage at 2/3 of the height was filled with petrified silt. Fortunately, a photograph of the gallery, found in 1913, has been preserved in the archives of the Moscow Kremlin Museums. If you believe the photograph, it could well be a passage that connected the dungeons of the Kremlin buildings. Firstly, the gallery was taller than the correspondent of the Novoye Vremya newspaper described it. Secondly, sewage and water channels were arranged in such a way that they were silted up as little as possible. To do this, the bottom of the channel was made in the form of a gutter or a trapezoid, which is not observed in the gallery shown in the picture.

In May 1499 Grand Duke Ivan III ordered Aleviz the New "to lay his stone courtyard, stone and brick chambers, and under them cellars and glaciers, in the old courtyard near the Annunciation [...]". In the 16th century, the palace of Ivan the Terrible appeared next to these buildings. Since that time, two pieces of news about the existence of caches have come down to us. English ambassador Anton Jenkinson testified that once he was led through a secret passage to an audience with Ivan IV. And pastor Johann Vetterman told his countrymen about the mysterious chambers with "double vaults", bricked up and locked with "triple locks", from where Moscow clerks got out the books of Grozny's liberals. The location of the passage and chambers, as well as their fate, is unknown. True, professor at the University of Strasbourg, Eduard Tremer, expressed the hope that the chambers with books were located in the underground part of the now existing Terem Palace. The latter was built in 1635-1636 on the basis of the chambers of Ivan III, but so far no one has tried to examine the two-story basements of the Terem Palace in search of hiding places. But surely somewhere in these dungeons there is a secret pantry, which is mentioned in the Krekshina chronicle. In 1610, before the Poles were to enter the Kremlin, the steward Nikifor Trakhaniotov “hid the first royal outfit and several vessels and things precious in antiquity and substance into an underground storeroom, unknown to anyone.” Was it not to this vault that the underground passage opened under the Terem Palace in 1963 led? Then, according to the testimony of the architect V.I. Fedorov, they found two previously unknown, excellently preserved cellars. From one led the passage to the south, but cleared it only 3 meters.

On the stone dungeons and basements of the grand ducal palaces in XVII century many Russian rulers built chambers for themselves and their households. During the reign of Peter I, these buildings became very dilapidated, and in the fire of 1701 the old stone palace burned out and remained derelict for a long time. By 1724, only the Faceted and Dining Chambers were restored. During the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, the architect F. B. Rastrelli restored the royal palace in the Kremlin. And in 1838-1859, the Grand Kremlin Palace was erected, which included ancient buildings: the Terem Palace, the Golden Tsaritsyna Chamber, nine churches of the 14th-17th centuries, etc. The oldest building included in the complex of the Grand Kremlin Palace is the small Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus. In the 15th century, the treasury of Grand Duke Ivan III was kept in its stone cellar. In 1514, Aleviz Novy built on this site the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary with the chapel of St. Lazarus, which were subjected to significant alterations in subsequent times. In the Inventory of Palace Buildings of 1769, it was said about the Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus: a stone vault, a wooden floor of the most dilapidated and rotten, log only in one corner, where there are round pillars, and in the middle and in other places there is no floor: old wooden doors, with an interior lock, iron and a dilapidated key, an old iron overlay with surf, under small window by the door.

The Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus was remembered in 1838. “When laying the foundation for the Kremlin palace, an ancient church with corridors and hiding places was found,” wrote M.I.P. The author of the book did not find any information about the construction of hiding places and corridors. Perhaps a description of them is kept in the fund of the Moscow Palace Office. However, it is known that some kind of hiding place in the Church of Lazarus existed as early as 1925. The director of the Armory Chamber, Professor V.K. Klein, in a report read at a meeting of the Special Commission at the Main Science of the People's Commissariat for Education, indicated: “A few days ago I was informed that a passage from one of the pillars of the Lazarevskaya Church was discovered, littered and unexamined.” Documents proving the clearing of this cache have not been found.

In 1968, in the Terem Palace, not far from the place where the Sytny Dvor was located in the 17th century, the restorer A. A. Klimenko discovered a dungeon (4x5 meters) that was not indicated on the plans. At its northern wall there was a stove built in the 19th century. and in the south one could see an arched doorway, which had a bookmark of two brick walls; behind it began a gallery with a white stone cladding. The depth of its laying is 4-4.5 meters, the height is 1.6 meters, the width is 0.7 meters, while in the upper part of its gallery is slightly wider than in the lower one. Knocking down the calcareous needles of stalactites and stalagmites, the restorer walked along the gallery. It led south, and then, meeting on the way the foundations of the Cathedral of the Savior on Bor, turned to the west, where it was blocked by a blockage. The length of the structure to the blockage is 48 meters.

Klimenko considered the gallery to be a sewer channel through which in the 17th century water from the royal soapbox went to Neglinnaya, although, according to him, he did not notice traces of silt on the flat floor of the gallery. It is known from old inventories that a "wire pipe" for water flow ran from Sytny Dvor to the Neglinnaya River. But this "pipe" was directed to the western wall of the Kremlin through the courtyard of the boyar I. D. Miloslavsky. Water from the royal soapbox could also flow along it. Why then was it necessary to arrange a gallery to the Savior on Bor? This tunnel clearly did not belong to the drainage system either. The area where the cathedral stood did not need drainage. And, if they had planned to arrange a drainage channel, they would have stretched it to Neglinnaya, using for this a ravine that descended from the western wall of the cathedral to the Konyushenny yard. The gallery could have been intended for secret communication between the Kremlin buildings, especially since it had access to the ancient dungeons of the Terem Palace. Suppose it was built during the construction of the grand-ducal palace Aleviz Novy; then, bending around the foundations of the Cathedral of the Savior on Bor, it was supposed to lead to underground part Embankment chambers, which appeared in 1487. This secret passage could have arisen later, for example. in 1560, when mansions for the children of Ivan the Terrible were built on the site of the Embankment Chambers. In 1601-1602, by decree of Boris Godunov, large stone chambers were erected here. “It was the building of the Reserve Palace, the facade of which descended along the cut downhill and above which in the 17th century we already find the Embankment Kremlin Garden. Here, it seems, there were wooden residential mansions of Tsar Boris, broken at the behest of the Pretender,” wrote I. E. Zabelin.

The impostor False Dmitry I built a luxurious palace here. According to the memoirs of the Dutch merchant Isaac Massa, who visited the palace, there were many secret doors and passages in it. The palace could have several secret passages arranged in the walls, but there is no need to talk about the “many” underground passages, since their construction is troublesome and expensive.

The chambers of the children of Grozny, like the palace of False Dmitry I, could include the dungeons of the old Embankment chambers with a secret passage. Perhaps one of the rulers brought this cache outside the Kremlin, to the Moscow River. Did Adam Olearius mention this move in the Description of the Journey to Muscovy? In May 1648, he witnessed the Salt Riot, during which the brother-in-law of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, the boyar B. I. Morozov, hid from the angry crowd in the royal palace, and then fled from the Kremlin through a secret passage. They saw him in the city and tried to capture him, but the boyar managed to slip away. After a few days, the tsar, having begged forgiveness for his favorite, brought Morozov out of the tsar's chambers to the people.

From the Grand Kremlin Palace, let's move on to the Poteshny Palace, the construction of which dates back to the second half of the 17th century. It was composed of the chambers of the Aptekarsky order and the choir of the boyar I. D. Miloslavsky - the father-in-law of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In February 1917, in search of royal treasures, soldiers entered the cellars of the Poteshny Palace, where many brickings were found, no one knows when and by whom they made. The soldiers, having broken the walls, found a secret room and an underground passage. These caches were again walled up without examination a year later, when the Soviet government moved from Petrograd to Moscow. There is a mention of this in the notes of I. E. Bondarenko.

In 1968, on Delegatskaya Street, in the place where it separates the Grand Kremlin and Poteshny Palaces, they dug up a white-stone gallery, which lay at a depth of more than 4 meters. She crossed the street from east to west. Whether it was a sewer that led from the Sytny Palace to Neglinnaya, or a secret passage, the author does not know. A couple of days later, the arch of the gallery was broken, a concrete pillar was installed in the hole and everything was covered with earth.

Miracles Monastery, destroyed in 1929, was famous for its extensive two-tier cellars, which the monks rented to merchants as warehouses. The monastery refectory, for example, had a cellar with a glacier built in the middle of the 15th century. The glacier was sometimes used as a place of detention for delinquent monks. So, in January 1483, for some guilt, Metropolitan Gerontius ordered that Archimandrite Gennady of the Chudov Monastery be thrown onto the glacier. Another monastery prison existed in the two-story white-stone dungeon of the church in honor of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael. The highest hierarchs of the Orthodox Church fell here. Here the famous Patriarch Hermogenes died of starvation, speaking in 1611 against the Polish invaders.

This is how V. M. Borin, who examined them in 1911, described the dungeons of the temple: “A passage and a staircase, partly stone, partly wooden, with thirty steps, leads to the lower tier arranged on the right western side of the temple [...]. And the basement floor is 3.12 sazhens below ground level. The lower dungeon, measuring 14x9x2.9 meters, had three altar niches, and its vaults were supported by four massive pillars. In this dungeon, when clearing it from the ground, they found iron chains, collars, chains. as well as human bones and skulls. “In some walls one can see immured, sealed arched openings; whether there were ancient underground passages here, it is impossible to say without an accurate study, but meanwhile, underground research of the Chudov Monastery with its hiding places and passages, perhaps, will provide material for its history, ”wrote Borin.

The upper floor of the dungeon of the Church of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael was semi-basement. According to the plan, this room is similar to the lower one. In the northern part of the upper dungeon there was a small room, once locked with an iron-bound door. In the southern wall there was an entrance to the zakamora measuring 3.5x2.5 meters, occupied by the tombs of two Moscow metropolitans - Timothy (1759-1767) and Platon (1775-1811). A.P. Pavlinov believed that in the 16th century the Church of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael was erected on the basements of the 15th century, while he referred to the fact that both basements were white stone, while the church itself was made of brick.

Then Borin turned his attention to the Church of the Annunciation.

It was built in 1483. Under Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich, it was dismantled due to dilapidation, and by 1686 a new building was erected on the old cellars. During construction, the Church of the Annunciation and the church of Metropolitan Alexy of the 15th century standing next to it were connected by an arched corridor, where the miraculous relics of Metropolitan Alexy were installed. “We managed to inspect a small room located at a considerable depth under the Church of the Annunciation with a chamber where coal is stored, in this chamber an arched hole was bricked up, leading to no one knows where,” the researcher reported in 1911.

Behind the bricking, discovered by V. Borin, there was a passage to the basement chambers (living and mukosey), located under the church of Metropolitan Alexy.

In 1905-1906, the living and mukosey chambers were adapted for the tomb of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and its sacristy. At the same time, the entrance to the chambers from the side of the dungeon of the Annunciation Cathedral was sealed up. The crypt with the coffin of Sergei Alexandrovich was placed just under the relics of Metropolitan Alexy.

A superficial examination of individual monastic buildings in 1911 did not make it possible to determine with which cellars the dungeon, discovered by a failure on April 15, 1882, "in the middle of the road between the corner of the Kremlin barracks, near which the Tsar Cannon stands, and the wall of the house of the Chudov Monastery" could be connected. The failure on the same day began to examine the police. A part of the pavement was removed and the earth was excavated in a section with a diameter of 1.5 meters. At a depth of just over a meter, they found a flooring of thick boards, and under it - a solid vault of white hewn stone. Having punched a hole in the vault, the police went downstairs. “Under the vault, a pipe lined with the same elbows was found with a flat bottom side, like a floor. Three officers with lanterns could freely walk along it at a distance of several sazhens, to the wall of the Chudov Monastery; further this wall blocked the road. In the other direction, between the barracks and the Arsenal, the passage is littered with fallen stones, ”wrote the Sovremennye Izvestiya newspaper.

An underground gallery discovered in 1882 near the Chudov Monastery (based on the materials of I.E. Zabelin)

A) Plan

a - the area of ​​the initial excavations at the site of the failure

b - vent, or window in the vault

c - direction of the gallery to the East, to the Chudov Monastery

d - wall separating the dungeon from the Chudov Monastery

e - the proposed direction of the gallery to the West, to the Trinity Gate.

f - Tsar Cannon

B) Cut

a - dug hole

b - stone vault-ceiling

c - stone floor of the dungeon

d - wall to Chudov monastery

e - embrasure of the window from the dungeon upward.

Soldiers of the Yekaterinoslav regiment stationed in the Kremlin were involved in the excavations. Further clearing made it possible to establish the direction of the "pipe" - from the Chudov Monastery it went to the Trinity Gates - and its dimensions: width 4 meters, height about 5 meters, length more than 7 meters.

The structure with a cylindrical vault had a niche in the eastern wall, deepening by 1.8 meters. Above it, in the vault, an embrasure window, walled up with brick, could be seen. “Both the wall itself and its lower slope are made of white hewn stone, and the lintel is made of old brick. ... At the top of the vault, in one place, stones fell out when laying a water pipe, and the pipe itself is visible in the vault. Close to the northern wall is another wall, also built of white stone, with one row of bricks on top of the vault," Sovremennye Izvestia reported.

Archaeologists I. E. Zabelin and V. E. Rumyantsev, invited as experts, dated the construction the end of the XVI century, attributing its creation to Boris Godunov, whose chambers stood not far from the Chudov Monastery.

Three days have passed, and the structure found has still not been cleared. Due to the complexity of the work, the Palace Office was forced to invite sappers from St. Petersburg. In the meantime, a real pilgrimage began to the excavation site. Muscovite old-timers said that twenty-five years ago there was already a failure here, which was not paid attention to. Everyone had stories on their lips related to the underground passages and secret chambers of the Kremlin. “It remains undoubted that under the Kremlin there are many ancient galleries, caves and cellars. There are even, according to rumor, several well-known underground galleries, the final exits and doors of which should supposedly be on the embankment of the Moscow River, near the Kremlin wall, in the descent of the mountain ... It is assumed that this dungeon is part, or allotment, from other secret underground passages that were heading to the Taynitskaya tower ... ”, the newspapers wrote.

On May 15, sappers, who arrived from St. Petersburg, began work in the mysterious dungeon "for a better examination of the underground cellar in the Kremlin and its bookmarks ...". This newspaper report about the excavations was the last. Judging by the rapid backfilling of the failure, no further clearing of the "pipe" and its research followed. Obviously, the Palace Office considered this event very expensive.

To this day, it remains unclear what this underground structure was: a giant tunnel or a cellar? On the eastern side, it was cut by the wall of the house of the Chudov Monastery, built later than the 16th century. On the western side, the transverse wall was also not found, that is, the structure went towards the Trinity Gate. Newspaper publications talked about the flooring of thick boards, but did not indicate whether it covered the vault completely or only at the point of failure. If the flooring was located where there was a failure, this would mean that it was made during the laying of a water pipe in the middle of the 19th century or during a failure that happened before 1882. If the flooring stretched over the entire vault, it means that it was arranged by architects who tried to protect the vault from damage. Consequently, the underground structure was located outside the buildings (under the yard, street, etc.). Due to the hasty backfilling of the dungeon-gallery, it was not possible to establish which building belonged to the wall adjoining it. north side.

In 1911, an old-timer of the Kremlin told I. Ya. Stelletsky a forgotten legend about Boris Godunov's flight through an underground passage somewhere to Okhotny Ryad. It allegedly happened in 1586, when Muscovites, turned against Boris by the boyars Shuisky, broke into the Kremlin and demanded his extradition. In Zabelin's "History of the city of Moscow" Stelletsky found a mention that Godunov, having moved to the royal palace, "left his courtyard empty, not giving it to anyone, not finding someone worthy to live in it." The archaeologist tried to connect this decision of Godunov with the underground secrets of his court and suggested a version: the “pipe” discovered by the failure was an escape route.

The existence of a hiding place from the chambers of Boris Godunov is quite acceptable, but did it make sense to build a secret passage of this size? Or maybe the purpose of the "pipe" was not as mysterious as it seemed to many? Describing the Tsareboris yard, the same I. E. Zabelin noted: “The drawing of Godunov shows two huge tall buildings several tiers high.” Such mansions, no doubt, also had impressive (possibly two-story) dungeons that served to store food, wine, coal, etc. At some time, these pantries became cramped, and Godunov arranged new cellars to match the existing ones, but placed them under the yard. In the 17th century, at the expense of sovereign and boyar donations, the territory of the Chudov Monastery expanded. Then some of Godunov's possessions, along with part of the "pipe", which was fenced off with a wall, could also go to him. For what needs the “pipe” was useful to the monks is unknown. But the dungeons of the Tsareboris Court continued to be used for economic purposes by its subsequent owners. In 1626, for example, the patriarchal cabbage cellars were located here.

In the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the place along the mountain from the Archangel Cathedral to the Spassky Gates was occupied by orders (Ambassadorial, Local, Robbery, etc.). In 1675, on their basis, buildings of new orders were erected, twice the size of the old ones. They were dismantled in 1770, when they gathered in the Kremlin to build a palace according to the project of Bazhenov. Somewhere in the dungeons of these orders there was a secret room with the treasures of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, shown to Peter I by the boyar I. B. Prozorovsky. According to Moscow newspapers, in 1894, when laying the monument to Emperor Alexander II, extensive cellars of orders and an old underground passage were excavated. It seems that the “pipe” (sewage channel) discovered by I. E. Zabelin was taken as an underground passage. The latter, on the basis of archival sources and archaeological excavations, established that in the 14th century a moat ran along the eastern wall of the Kremlin, which turned into a “pipe” two hundred years later, through which sewage and rainwater were discharged into the Moscow River. The "pipe", as already mentioned, originated in the courtyard of the boyar F.I. Mstislavsky (he was adjacent to the north side orders XVII century) and went beyond the Kremlin somewhere between the Second Nameless and Petrovsky towers. In the Inventory of 1667, it was said about her: “Yes, from that Svirlov tower on the wall in the wall, the church service of Peter the Metropolitan and near the service in the circle, a pipe was conceived below, a descent to the water, and that pipe was not completed. And in that gap people pass.

I. E. Zabelin refers the construction of the "pipe" to XVII century, since the first mention of it was found in the Inventory of 1667. However, it is more likely that this, and other waste "pipes" were built by the Italians at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century. Otherwise, rain, melt and other waters would have accumulated in the lowlands near the walls of the Kremlin, undermining and destroying them. In the second half of the 17th century, sewage canals were repaired. It is known that in 1663 the “pipe” leading from the courtyard of N.I. Odoevsky (it was located at the Middle Arsenal Tower) to the Neglinnaya River was ordered to be arranged with “new sluks ( vaults.- T.B.) stone works by an apprentice, so that there would be no water and dirt and stink from it and no bad things in the Apothecary Garden. In 1683, the “wire pipe” from Sytny Dvor was to be repaired. The craftsmen were instructed to “make stone vaults again, because that pipe collapsed, and clean the earth from the pipe [...]”.

During the construction of the Kremlin wall, "Fryazina" took care of the drainage. In 1894, a large arched span was discovered in the wall between the Borovitskaya and Armory towers, under which there was no foundation. Shcherbatov began to clear it from the ground and found thick logs stacked on top of each other and blocking the entrance to the Kremlin. At the 5th meter, the span led to the Konyushenny yard. The researcher came to the conclusion that the span was arranged to drain soil water at the site of a deep ravine descending to the Neglinnaya River.

In addition to the listed underground structures, a lot of old buildings lurked and lurk in the bowels of Borovitsky Hill. Some of them were discovered by failures, which were especially rich in the 19th century. Let us turn once again to the testimony of M.I.P.: “The well-known archpriest A. Lebedev, in the course of his more than 45 years of service in the Kremlin, counted nine such gaps in the vaults of hiding places or passages, of which seven were filled up, and two were repaired and not blocked up . [...] In the last fifty years of this century, this is where gaps were observed and hiding places were discovered: one of these was marked on the road against the right corner of the eastern wall of the Archangel Cathedral near the sidewalk that goes along the ridge of the mountain. Another failure occurred in the square opposite the large palace in the first year of its construction. [...] In the fifties, in the yard where the golden company is located, a failure was also discovered. In 1860, an ancient dwelling and several rooms were opened in the Synodal Court, a stove was found here with coals left over from the furnace. [...] Then, in the same years, a similar cache was found in the ground at the Poteshnoy Dvor.

The author does not intend to rashly classify all the chambers discovered by failures as caches, as M.I.P. does. Moreover. Considering that the thickness of the cultural layer on Borovitsky Hill ranges from 3 to 5 meters, and at the Arsenal and the Poteshny Palace it reaches 7-8 meters in places, we can safely say that some of the structures found in ancient times were above ground. Most of the "hiding places" were ordinary utility cellars and glaciers. In the 17th century, only Sytny Dvor had more than thirty dungeons. I. E. Zabelin, referring to the old Kremlin cellars in the book “The Home Life of the Russian Tsars ...”, pointed out their diversity: “Under the Reply and Dining Chambers, as mentioned, there were three extensive Fryazhsky cellars, called in the proper sense wine. Next to them was a special wine chamber, and near, under the Front passages, there were copper chambers, one of which was called deaf. At the front gate to Cathedral Square, they went to a crooked cellar with three deaf cellars, in which honey and wine were also stored.

And there were a great many such dungeons: under the royal palaces and boyar mansions, under churches and orders, under monastic refectories and military arsenals. AT early XIX century, when the destruction of dilapidated and unsightly buildings began in the Kremlin, the palaces of Kormovaya and Khlebennaya disappeared. Sytny and other buildings. In rare cases, buildings were demolished along with the foundations. Cellars covered with earth and sand from time to time make themselves felt. The last failures in the Kremlin occurred in 1989-1992: three at the Arsenal, one at the building where the administration of the President of Russia is located. The reason for the failures of geophysics was called suffusion. As already mentioned, ancient underground structures were often covered with earth, sand, or even construction debris. With an increase in the level of soil water, a malfunction of water-bearing communications or storm sewers, water entered the backfill, washed it out, thereby causing subsidence of the pavement and failures.

M.I.P., the describer of the Kremlin failures, believed that “the Kremlin dungeons were once connected to each other by corridors and undoubtedly had several exits to the surface of the earth. Lebedev points to two of these: one of them is inside the Kremlin, precisely from the second basement at the Archangel Cathedral, at the stairs to the now paved roadway, against the south wall of the cathedral; the other, visible even now, is located outside the Kremlin, under the tower above the Borovitsky Gates, in the third section of the Alexander Garden. In this place, at the end of the forties, a huge cellar made of white stone and a corridor were opened.

I. Ya. Stelletsky adhered to the same version. In 1913, he finds in the Krekshina chronicle several lines dedicated to the underground Kremlin. The chronicler reported that Pietro Solari built “two diverting archers, or caches, and many chambers and paths to them, with lintels along the dungeon, on the foundations of stone water currents, like rivers, flowing through the entire Kremlin-city, siege for the sake of sitting.”

Trying to decipher this entry, Ignatiy Yakovlevich draws the following picture: “The towers with caches, outlets to the river were called outlets. Many chambers are mysterious underground chambers, there are only a few of them registered, but not yet explained by science, many are waiting for their turn all over Moscow. The mysterious structures of the past are interconnected by underground paths - highways or passages that merge under the Kremlin into a junction station. The passages are divided into sections belonging to different persons, hence the iron doors so frequent in the underground passages, according to the figurative expression of the chronicler - “lintels along the dungeon”. Underground rivers on stone foundations are a secret ( Angular.- T.B.) Arsenal tower, which contained a whole range of mysteries. At the time of the siege, the Grand Duke's castle needed not only water in general, obtained through the Solari cache from Neglinnaya, but also the direct supply of the royal chambers with it. Nature went to meet human comforts: under ( Angular.- T.B.) The arsenal tower turned out to be an abundant source of water. It was him that Solari processed into a well. In it, the water periodically rose, overflowing overboard. Natural "water leaks" were formed, directed along the stone foundations (gutters or pipes) in the underground galleries where they should be with bends to the side.

If one can still agree with the existence of "water currents" and separate underground passages on the territory of the Kremlin, then the thought of numerous private hiding places arranged in the royal residence raises a smile. As you can see, Stelletsky not only connected the underground “chambers” discovered at different times in the Kremlin with “highways”, but also brought secret passages far beyond its borders. In the future, Ignatiy Yakovlevich confidently led only one underground gallery: from the Corner Arsenal Tower to the Assumption Cathedral, and from there to the Taynitskaya Tower, although rumors about underground passages stretching from all sides of Moscow to Borovitsky Hill, with the light hand of Stelletsky, still circulate to this day .

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