The Neglinnaya or Neglinka River is completely hidden from the eyes of Muscovites: this river is 7.5 km long back in the 19th century. was hidden in the collector. Neglinka has become a legend among the capital's diggers, an unusual attraction that people go to.
There are several versions of the origin of this toponym. The most common option: the river received its name because its bed is sandy, without clay impurities. Philologists do not exclude that the toponym could come from the northern word “negla” (willow) or from the Lithuanian root “giml” (“depth”). In addition, in ancient times, neglinka was a marshy area.
The first chronicle mention of the Neglinka River dates back to 1401. Judging by ancient records, at that time the Neglinka was a powerful waterway. They caught fish in the river, installed mills on it, and even used it for navigation. Neglinka also performed a defensive function, being a natural barrier on the way to. During the spring flood, the width of the Neglinka in some places was 1.5 km, and the depth was 25 m.
The river originates in the Maryina Roshcha area and flows into the Moscow River at. The Neglinka has several tributaries, the largest of which is the Naprudnaya River.
In the 16th century The Neglinka River fed six Moscow ponds, as well as a wide ditch near the Kremlin. Numerous disasters are also associated with the Neglinka: it is this river that is “responsible” for the large-scale Moscow floods of the 16th-19th centuries.
IN early XVIII V. Peter I ordered to further strengthen the Kremlin with five bolverki: steep triangular walls, under which there were deep ditches. The ditches were flooded with the waters of the Neglinka River; in addition, for these purposes, the Swan Pond, which disappeared forever from the map of Moscow, was completely drained.
Despite Peter's fears, Swedish troops did not enter Moscow. And in 1823 the Kremlin bolts were demolished.
In the upper reaches, the water of the Neglinka River was exceptionally clean: the sand acted as a natural filter. Until the 19th century. the river was used as a natural fish farm. Merchants bought a license for this activity from the Moscow authorities. In winter, ice from Neglinka was transported throughout Moscow and used to store food. A special police department monitored the cleanliness of the water: Muscovites were strictly forbidden to wash clothes or wash horses in Neglinka.
Downstream ecological situation was no longer so joyful: because large quantity the dammed water became cloudy. The lower reaches of the Neglinka were popularly called “filthy places.”
The turning point in the history of the river came at the beginning of the 19th century. The city authorities decided to hide a part of Neglinka, approximately 3 km long, underground. The plan for the grandiose brick collector was developed by engineer E.G. Cheliev. In addition, he created a unique cement composition that is not afraid of moisture.
In 1817, work began on “walling up” Neglinka, and in 1819 it was completed. Despite the quality of the reservoir, the river came out from time to time, flooding the surrounding areas. The causes of flooding were heavy rains, floods and blocked pipes.
In 1860, the collector was extended by 1 km, and in 1970 Neglinka was almost completely hidden from the eyes of Moscow residents. The river has become a kind of ghost attraction, a legend among diggers, history and archeology buffs.
But despite all attempts to hide the Neglinka, from time to time this river breaks out of its underground bed. For example, in 2015, the Neglinka flood caused by a rain flooded the streets of central Moscow.
Excursions to Neglinka
The passage along the artificial channel of the Neglinka was described in his book “Moscow and Muscovites” by the famous writer and journalist V. Gilyarovsky. Modern metropolitan diggers sometimes call the extreme route along underground river"Gilarovsky's path"
An excursion to Neglinka can be started from the very different places Moscow. Participants descend underground through a regular sewer hatch. All excursionists must be equipped with special shoe covers, helmets with headlamps and rubber gloves.
There is no unpleasant smell in the sewer: Neglinka is not a sewer, but a real underground river with fresh water.
Part of the route will have to be walked on water. The depth is mostly below the knee, but due to the large amount of silt it is quite difficult to move. However, after some time, sidewalks appear in the collector. In the underground channel of the Neglinka, the temperature in summer is approximately 17°C, in winter - 10°C.
During the excursion, tourists will see numerous tributaries of the Neglinka, including the mouth of the Naprudnaya River, brick collectors from 1904 and 1914, ancient chambers, and underground waterfalls.
The brick vault along which the Neglinka flows amazes with the quality of construction. For 200 years, the masonry has remained virtually intact, despite daily exposure to moisture.
An excursion to the Neglinka River will also be interesting for lovers unusual places, both historians and ordinary tourists. Staying in an ancient man-made grotto with a slowly flowing river makes you think about the eternal. You can take memorable photographs in the Neglinka collector.
Written by me for Digger Wikipedia. It focuses on history underground system collectors.
The first mentions of Neglinnaya (Neglim) date back to the period of Ivan Kalita. It began from the swamps near Maryina Roshcha and flowed from north to south, flowing into the Moscow River near the Kremlin. There were several ponds in the upper reaches. Then the river was full-flowing and clean, and in its lower reaches it was navigable. But fast growth population of Moscow has led to the fact that already end of the XVIII centuries, Neglinnaya was so polluted by sewage flowing from the streets that its water was considered hazardous to health. According to the plan of Catherine II, in 1775 they were supposed to enclose the Neglinnaya River in an open canal, build boulevards for walking along the banks, and lay a water supply system with fountains along the eastern bank of the river from Mytishchi to the Kuznetsky Bridge.
Neglinnaya in an open channel on a map of Moscow in 1739.
In 1791-92 According to the design of engineer I. Gerard, a canal about 2 m wide was laid to the east of the old river bed, which was then covered with earth. Under Trubnaya Square the river flowed in an underground tunnel (“pipe”). After the fire of 1812, the Commission for the Construction of the City of Moscow decided: “to cover the open canal with pools due to the insufficient flow of water in it from accumulated sewage, which produces trouble in the air, by blocking it with arches.” This was carried out in 1817-19. The work on the construction of the underground bed was carried out by surveyor, urban planner, and military engineer E. G. Cheliev. The land for backfilling the pipe was taken from the earthen fortifications of the Kremlin wall, which at that time were demolished as unnecessary. Since then, part of Neglinnaya from Samotechnaya Street to the mouth flows underground, and the banks former channel turned into Neglinnaya Street.
"Lubyanoy trade on Truba", A. Vasnetsov.
In the second half of the 19th century, the Neglinnaya collector could no longer cope with the flow. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the owners of nearby houses arranged unauthorized taps through which they dumped sewage into the river. In 1886-87 under the leadership of engineer N. M. Levachev was produced major renovation and reconstruction of the pipe along its entire length. The tunnel was divided into three sections, in each of which the sewer arch and pavement were opened in 12 places. Using pumps, water from the tunnel was diverted into wooden trays lined with iron, suspended at a height of 1.5 arshins above the bottom of the canal. During reconstruction, the tunnel was cleared, the walls were plastered, the bottom was deepened and made in the form of a reverse vault, and the tray was lined with Tarusa stone.
In 1906, from Samotechnaya Square to Sushchevsky Val, part of the Neglinnaya in the upper reaches and its tributary, the Naprudnaya River, were removed underground. In 1910-14 areas in disrepair were again subjected to major repairs. Then, according to the design of engineer M.P. Shchekotov, a section of parabolic section 117 m long was built next to the Metropol Hotel and the Maly Theater. Its height is 3.6 meters, width - 5.75 meters. For its time, it was a brilliant engineering project, with hydraulic properties not inferior to modern standards. It was planned to rebuild the entire Neglinnaya collector according to this model, but the work was prevented by the First World War. This section of the collector now bears the secret name “Shchekotovsky Tunnel”.
The old Neglinnaya collector, despite the reconstruction of some sections, could not cope with the increasing flow during heavy rains. Thus, the downpours that occurred on July 14 and 25, 1965 caused flooding of the central part of the city over an area of more than 25 hectares. Therefore, in 1966, a new collector was built near Zaryadye using the shield method, ending with a new water outlet. The old riverbed under the Alexander Garden became a backup one. Flooding of the area has decreased significantly, but has not stopped.
Flood on Neglinnaya in the 60s.
After floods caused by rainfall on July 7 and August 9, 1973, Moscow authorities decided to build a new sewer for the Neglinnaya River. It was built in stages from 1974 to 1989 from Durova Street to the Metropol Hotel, using the original "half-panel" method. At the same time, the duplicating old river bed from Teatralnaya Square to the Moscow River was strengthened using a reinforced concrete jacket. Old site from Samotechnaya Square to Trubnaya has since been practically not used, and the tunnel from Trubnaya Square to Teatralnaya has been converted into a cable-thermal collector.
Construction of a new prefabricated sewer reinforced concrete elements. 1974-75
Formally, the name of Neglinka is also associated with a project implemented in 1996 on Manezhnaya Square, where supposedly an old section of the river was brought out. In fact, this is an artificial reservoir of a closed cycle, the flow of which is maintained artificially. The old site is located in the same place under the Alexander Garden.
Neglinka and Gilyarovsky
The famous Moscow reporter and writer Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovsky was very interested in underground Moscow. When preparations were being made for the reconstruction of the Neglinka collector in the early 1880s, Gilyarovsky was part of the commission that was created to inspect the dilapidated old riverbed. In the report "Underground Work in Moscow" he published the commission's report:
The arch of the chimney is quite well preserved, but in some places there are longitudinal cracks in it, especially large ones under Teatralny Proezd and near the Sandunovsky fountain, for 60 fathoms. In some places the arch subsided and narrowed the channel. The canal is also narrowed by a network of gas and water pipes crossing it. The canal has meanders and sharp turns along its length, especially frequent on the way from the Maly Theater to the Theater Pool. The canal walls are 4 bricks thick, and the vault is 2 bricks thick. The floor consists of a double row of planks laid along the channel. The canal walls rest on three rows of piles, and the floor is supported on transverse logs embedded
end into these piles. The floor was rotten in places; its boards are torn off by the current and block the canal. The channel height is not the same. In some places a person tall could walk freely along the bottom of the canal, but in some places, thanks to the sediment, it was almost impossible to crawl while lying down.
In his famous book“Moscow and Muscovites,” published in 1926, Gilyarovsky dedicated a separate chapter to Neglinka. It was called “Secrets of Neglinka,” and in it the author described how in the early seventies of the 19th century he descended into the Neglinka sewer.
...On a hot July day, we raised an iron drain well in front of Malyushin’s house, near Samoteka, and lowered a ladder into it. Nobody paid attention to our operation - everything was done very quickly: they raised the bars, lowered the stairs. Foul-smelling steam poured out of the hole. Fedya the plumber was the first to climb; the hole, damp and dirty, was narrow, the ladder stood vertically, his back scraped against the wall. The squelching of water and a voice, as if from a crypt, were heard:
- Climb, or something!
I pulled my hunting boots higher, buttoned up my leather jacket and began to descend. Elbows and shoulders touched the walls of the pipe. With my hands I had to firmly hold on to the dirty steps of the vertical, swaying staircase, supported, however, by the workers who remained at the top. With every step down, the stench became stronger and stronger. It was getting creepy. Finally, the sound of water and squelching was heard. I looked up. All I could see was a blue quadrangle, bright sky and the face of the worker holding the ladder. A cold, bone-piercing dampness engulfed me...
Illustrations
Few of the residents and guests of Moscow know that they are separated from the underground river in the center of the capital by only a sewer manhole and a couple of meters of land. Neglinka originates from the Pashensky swamp near Maryina Roshcha and, crossing the central blocks of the city from north to south, flows under the streets that owe their names to it: Samotechnye Square, Boulevard and Lane, Neglinnaya Street and Trubnaya Square.
Neglinka is a legendary river of its kind. Not particularly long and full of water, it played a significant role in the life of Moscow: Neglinnaya contributed to the emergence of the valley on the banks of which the Kremlin stands. How the Neglinnaya River turned from a completely ordinary river into underground sewers, and what its fate is in modern Moscow, we will tell in this material.
Change of river names in history
The Neglinka River was first mentioned in chronicles of the early 15th century under the name Neglimny. By the way, over the past years this river has changed many names, including Neglinnaya, Neglinnaya and Samoteka. According to one version, the latter name appeared due to the fact that the middle course of the river in the area of the current Trubnaya Square flowed from flowing ponds, that is, it flowed by gravity.
The role of Neglinka in the life of Moscow residents
It's hard to imagine, but Neglinnaya was once a deep river with clean water, and in its lower reaches it was even navigable. At the beginning of the 16th century, water for the ditch around the Kremlin wall came from Neglinnaya. Dams were built on the river, creating six interconnected ponds used for fish farming. Water was also taken from the ponds to extinguish fires that were frequent at that time.
Pollution problems
However, already in mid-18th century centuries, the waters of Neglinnaya were heavily polluted, as they were used as a waste drain for the needs of Moscow's rapidly growing population and developing industry. It was decided to drain some of the ponds. It should be added that Neglinnaya flooded and flooded neighboring streets. Therefore, by 1775, Catherine II drew up a project in which Neglinnaya was ordered to be “turned into an open canal, with boulevards for walking along the banks.”
Pipe construction
However, the open canal, which smelled of sewage along its entire length, did not contribute to improving the atmosphere in the capital, so it was decided to fill it up, having previously covered it with arches. Military engineer E. Cheliev took on the construction of the underground bed, and under his leadership, by 1819, part of Neglinnaya from Samotechnaya Street to the mouth was enclosed in a pipe, which was a three-kilometer brick vault. And the banks of the former canal turned into Neglinnaya Street.
First major overhaul
Half a century later, the Neglinnaya collector stopped coping with the flow of water. During heavy floods and heavy rains, the river made its way to the surface. The situation was complicated by home owners who set up makeshift taps through which they dumped sewage into the river. And 1886-87. under the leadership of engineer N. Levachev, a major overhaul of the underground canal was carried out. The tunnel was divided into three sections.
Shchekotovsky tunnel
In 1910-1914. According to the design of engineer M. Shchekotov, a section of the Neglinka collector, located under Teatralnaya Square, was built. This tunnel, exactly 117 meters long, runs next to the Metropol Hotel and the Maly Theater. Now it is called in honor of its creator - “Shchekotovsky Tunnel”, and illegal excursions along the Neglinka are usually held here.
Flood problem
Despite the construction of more and more new collectors, the flooding did not stop - in the mid-60s of the last century, the Neglinka again burst to the surface and flooded some streets so much that they had to be navigated by boats. When the sewer from Trubnaya Square to the Metropol Hotel was updated and significantly expanded in the early 70s, the flooding finally stopped.
Neglinka at the end of the twentieth century
By 1997, the studio of the artist and sculptor Zurab Tsereteli completed a project that included the reconstruction of the Neglinka riverbed from the Alexander Garden to Manezhnaya Square. This closed-circuit reservoir, in which the flow is maintained artificially, is not actually an attempt to bring a section of the river out of the ground, as many Muscovites believe. At the moment, the imitation of Neglinka in this place is equipped with fountains and sculptures.
The Neglinnaya River, which flows through the territory of Moscow, is not particularly long and has a lot of water. Its length is only 7 kilometers. Ships never sailed along the Neglinka, but this river contributed to the emergence of a valley on the banks of which the Kremlin was built. When the Neglinnaya channel was directed into a ditch, it became a protective fortification of the western part of the Kremlin.
The name of the river is a distorted "Neglimna". The river was probably named this way back in pre-Slavic times; the name has no connection with clay, and the names of Moscow streets have already come from the river.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Neglinka was hidden in a chimney, and today, in the interval between Manezhnaya Square and the Alexander Garden, it was brought out. Although, rather, this is a symbolic Neglinka - its bed has been changed, and the water in it is from a water supply system. The real Neglinnaya is dirty stream, still encased in the manifold.
Let's return to the story of Neglinnaya. The river began in the area of Skladochnaya Street, in the Pashensky swamp. It was a small stream that often dried up in summer time. A trickle ran along the 3rd and 4th Streletsky lanes. In the area of Sushchevsky Val on the right, another one flowing into the stream, coming out of the Butyrsky Garden. A small river ran further along Novosuschevskaya and Dostoevsky streets, and near Seleznevskaya it was joined by a stream flowing from the Antropov pits.
The already strengthened Neglinnaya River ran along Samotechnaya Street along Samotechny Boulevard. In this area in the past there was a gravity (flowing) pond, and the upper reaches of the Neglinka also began to be called Samoteka. And another Samotechnaya River in Moscow began from Altufevsky Pond.
Within the boundaries of modern Samotechny Boulevard, Neglinka-Samoteka connected with the Naprudnaya (Sinichka) River, and turned into the real Neglinnaya, known to all Muscovites. Then the Neglinka flowed through Samotechnaya Square, through Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Trubnaya Square, walked along Neglinnaya Street, along Okhotny Ryad, and then flowed through the Alexander Garden, going down to the Moscow River. The Neglinka also flowed through such a famous Moscow street as Kuznetsky Most.
The left bank of the Neglinka, on which the Kremlin was located, was relatively steep, and the right bank (from the side of Mokhovaya Street) was gentle. Further from the Kremlin, the right bank of the river rose, forming Strastnaya Gorka.
The banks of the Neglinnaya were completely cut up by ravines (enemies), through which streams constantly flowed and flowed into the river. The most famous of these tributaries is the Uspensky Vrazhek. Which originated at Georgievsky Lane, crossed Tverskaya Street, and flowed into Neglinka at Manege, on Mokhovaya Street. Many tributaries of the Neglinnaya have not survived, but in total, four tributary streams flowed into the Neglinnaya along Tsvetnoy Boulevard.
Why were the banks of the Neglinka high? There is an explanation for this. In the Kremlin area there are two wide valleys of the Moscow River and the Yauza River. The width of these valleys is approximately 5-7 kilometers. Between these lowlands from the northwest and to the Kremlin is the Klinsko-Dmitrovskaya Upland, the watershed between the Moscow and Yauza rivers. The highest areas of this bifurcated watershed are moraine hills (of glacial origin). Along the Neglinka there are three such hills. On the right bank is Strastnaya Gorka, and on the left: Borovitsky Hill, which turns into Pskov Hill and Naprudny Hill.
Three centuries ago, it was impossible to imagine Moscow without the Neglinnaya River. But the city developed rapidly, and by the end of the 18th century the river turned into a sewer. They even tried to improve it: ponds appeared in place of Tsvetnoy Boulevard, and along the entire length of present-day Neglinnaya Street the riverbed was straightened and stone embankments were built. But from the smells Wastewater This did not help, and they decided to chain the fetid river into a pipe. This was done in 1819, just during the massive reconstruction of Moscow during the restoration after the fire of 1812.
Underground Moscow is the whole world, and Neglinnaya is the most famous and most well-trodden underground river in the capital.
Let's take a walk along the old underground river and see what it looks like now —>
It would seem that Neglinka remained only in names - Neglinnaya Street, Kuznetsky Most. You can also go down to the Archeology Museum and admire the Resurrection Bridge. Or approach the Trinity Bridge from the Kutafya Tower, and imagine that instead of the flow of people through the Alexander Garden, Neglinnaya carries its waters under the arch of the bridge. And few people think about the fate of the river after it is imprisoned in a sewer.
Let's turn to the Neglinnaya collector diagram:
Pre-revolutionary collectors are marked in red, Soviet ones in black.
So, we go down and find ourselves in a 1906 sewer, with stunning brickwork.
We are under the park on Samotechnaya Street. View upstream to the north: the Neglinnaya collector goes to the left, the Naprudnaya river, the left tributary of the Neglinnaya, goes straight ahead.
All elements of the collector are very beautiful, despite the fact that this is an absolutely utilitarian structure.
We look up one more time before heading down the river. The hatch is very close, the surface of the earth is only a meter from the roof of the tunnel.
In front of us is a straight section of 1906, we are under Samotechny Boulevard, heading towards the Garden Ring.
Along the way we encounter various interesting things. For example, storm drain collectors. This is also 1906. All these tunnels were built open method. The egg-shaped shape was achieved thanks to wooden formwork, which was covered with bricks and then moved further.
Smaller streams were released through ceramic pipes. These pipes were made at the beginning of the twentieth century at a ceramic factory in the city of Borovichi. Note the graceful cross-section with four stripes. When laying new concrete pipes, the old ceramic ones were filled in. Here, a tree root comes out of the pipe. Moreover, it was much larger; part of it had already been chopped off.
A little closer to the Garden Ring, the brick collector is plastered. In some places it is crossed by other communications. The river seems very muddy and dirty. But it is worth noting that in Moscow the sewerage and storm drainage systems are separate. There are no bad odors in the Neglinnaya sewer, it smells like rainy dampness! Although, for example, in St. Petersburg, Paris, London, Kyiv and many other cities, sewerage and storm drainage systems are common.
And here we are at the Garden Ring. There is a whole crossroads of underground roads. On the left is Neglinka’s understudy. Even further to the left is a small tributary.
There was a snow removal chamber here. Instead of concrete slab on top there was a grate through which snow was thrown into the collector from above back in the early 2000s.
Small influx from right side. A ladder to the top and a well leading to the hatch are visible.
We cross the Garden Ring. This is a collector from the 1880s. The base, water tray and lower parts of the walls are made of white stone. Above is plastered brick. Attention! There is a sharp left turn ahead.
Until 1974, the collector continued straight ahead, and then a new tunnel was built parallel to it on the left, and now the river turns 90 degrees to the left, in its direction. The old sewer has been preserved, but the passage into it has been blocked. Now it can only be reached from Trubnaya Square. What's there, around the bend?
Around the bend is a waterfall, albeit a small one. It is not difficult to overcome it.
You can get to this place if you turn left after the waterfall, against the flow of the river. This is part of the 1974 tunnel under the Garden Ring, so there is no current here.
From the bridge with the waterfall, we turn sharply to the right along with the waters of Neglinnaya and find ourselves in a long reinforced concrete collector under Tsvetnoy Boulevard. And yet, why was a new collector laid here parallel to the old one? The reason is floods. And we're not just talking about the 19th century. Imagine, in the 1960s and early 1970s, Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Trubnaya Square several times turned into a surface of water.
Flood of 1960. Neglinnaya street
The old collector from 1819 could not always cope with the volume of water during heavy summer rainfalls. Minor floods occurred almost every year; Muscovites especially remember the floods of 1949, 1960, 1965 and 1973.
Flood of 1960. Garden Ring, Samotechnaya Square. Ahead is Tsvetnoy Boulevard.
The patience of the city authorities ran out, and in 1974 they laid a new concrete collector, much wider than the original one. The difference is obvious: the old collector passed only 13.7 m3/s of water, and the new one - 66.5 m3/s. Neglinka was tamed, and since then she has not come out anymore.
The collector was built using an open method, using prefabricated reinforced concrete elements. The new tunnel ran from the Garden Ring to Teatralny Proezd: under Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Neglinnaya Street.
The hatch and the light from it are very close.
We walk along the concrete collector of 1974 along the entire Tsvetnoy Boulevard, and under Trubnaya Square we turn right. This is what we were looking for - the legendary “Gilyarovsky Trail”, a fragment of the original collector of 1819. Water has not flowed here for more than 40 years.
Vladimir Gilyarovsky:
“And so, on a hot July day, we raised an iron drain well in front of Malyushin’s house, near Samoteka, and lowered a ladder there. Nobody paid attention to our operation - everything was done very quickly: they raised the bars, lowered the stairs. Foul-smelling steam was pouring out of the hole.”
Malyushin’s house is house 19. It was located on the site of the current exit from the Tsvetnoy Boulevard metro station. From there Gilyarovsky walked along Neglinka to Trubnaya Square. And he climbed to the surface approximately where we enter this area:
Gilyarovsky trail. This original collector is wider and lower in cross-section than the one that runs under Samotechnaya Street. The photo was taken from point 1 (look at the map).
Gilyarovsky:
“I was left alone in this walled crypt and walked about ten steps in knee-deep water. Has stopped. There was darkness all around me. The darkness is impenetrable, a complete absence of light. I turned my head in all directions, but my eye could not discern anything.
I hit my head on something, raised my hand and felt the wet, cold, warty, mucus-covered stone vault and nervously pulled my hand away... I even became scared. It was quiet, only the water was gurgling below. Every second of waiting for a worker with fire seemed like an eternity.”
Gilyarovsky:
“With the help of a light bulb, I examined the walls of the dungeon, damp, covered with thick mucus. We walked for a long time, in places plunging into deep mud or unclimbable, fetid liquid mud, in places bending over, since the drifts of mud were so high that it was impossible to walk straight - I had to bend down, and yet at the same time I reached the arch with my head and shoulders. My feet sank into the mud, sometimes bumping into something solid. It was all covered in liquid mud, it was impossible to see, and who knows.”
We have reached point 2. Now this collector is a dead end. The water here is stagnant, and since there is no current, what follows is impassable mud. Somewhere there, in the distance, is the same hatch into which Gilyarovsky descended.
Gilyarovsky:
“Again above us is a quadrangle of clear sky. A few minutes later we came across a rise under our feet. There was a pile of mud here that was especially thick, and apparently there was something piled up underneath the dirt... We climbed through the pile, lighting it with a light bulb. I poked my foot, and something springed under my boot... We stepped over the pile and moved on. In one of these drifts, I was able to see the half-covered corpse of a huge Great Dane. It was especially difficult to get over the last drift before exiting to Trubnaya Square, where the stairs awaited us. Here the mud was especially thick, and something kept slipping under our feet. It was scary to think about it.
But Fedya still burst out:
“What I say is true: we go after people.”
And this could well be true, because the places around are gangster - the slum Grachevka with taverns, brothels and flophouses. Just look at the Hell tavern, a breeding ground for crime. In the mid-19th century, Governor General Zakrevsky even ordered the trees on Trubnoy Boulevard to be cut down so that bandits would not hide in the thickets. And on the boulevard itself they placed flower shops and renamed the most criminal boulevard in Moscow Tsvetnoy.
The vault is brick and plastered, the base is white stone. There are marks on the bricks of the vault:
Brick stamp with the abbreviation KAZ. These marks date back to the 1810s - 1830s, which corresponds to the construction of the Neglinnaya collector.
We return along the Gilyarovsky path back to Trubnaya Square.
By the way, Trubnaya Square is called that not because Neglinka is leaking in the pipe. The name is much older. In this place, from the end of the 16th century, Neglinnaya crossed the fortress wall White City. For some reason, the arch in the wall for the river was called a pipe:
Trubnaya Square at the beginning of the 18th century. Reconstruction of Apollinary Vasnetsov
The name spread to the surrounding area and then justified itself when the river was actually chained into a “pipe”. In the first half of the 19th century, Tsvetnoy Boulevard was called Trubnoy.
And now a little about the inhabitants of Neglinnaya.
Where would we be without cockroaches? Here they are of a noble color, the color of mahogany. 3-4 centimeters long. In 2010, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov came down to Neglinka and spoke about others, white and 10 cm tall:
“Large cockroaches live and thrive there, which we could not even imagine in our everyday life - about ten centimeters. They are white because it is dark there, and they do not want people to touch them with their hands. I tried this, but they jump straight into the water. They are good swimmers".
Suddenly the concrete collector breaks off and beauty awaits us ahead:
In the frame, the so-called Shchekotovsky tunnel is a section built by engineer M.P. Shchekotov in 1914 under Teatralnaya Square. This section is only 117 meters long, 3.6 meters high and 5.8 meters wide. Not just a monument of engineering art, but also crazy a nice place. Brickwork mesmerizing! There is not a single corner here, the entire section line is smooth, as if the influence of the Art Nouveau style is felt. Everything was built using wooden formwork. And this is the only one of the pre-revolutionary Neglinnaya tunnels that has sidewalks on the sides of the man-made river bed. There is information that they wanted to make the entire Neglinnaya collector from Tsvetnoy Boulevard the same, but the outbreak of the First World War prevented it.
In the previous frame, traces of the old collector's outputs are visible on the sides early XIX century, which is no longer in effect.
The turn of the Shchekotovsky tunnel is the most beautiful place in Neglinnaya. It was here that Yuri Luzhkov descended.
This tunnel runs from the corner of the Maly Theater diagonally under Teatralny Proezd, and makes a turn under Teatralnaya Square. Before its construction, a narrow old sewer reached from Neglinnaya Street almost to the wall of the Metropol Hotel and turned at a right angle to the right. For this reason, large blockages constantly occurred here, and because of them, floods. The construction of the Shchekotovsky tunnel solved the problem in the Teatralnaya Square area.
Meanwhile, we approached the finishing point - the gate chamber under the square on Teatralnaya Square.
Fork. The sewer underneath the Kitay-Gorod quarters runs straight out, flowing into the Moscow River at Zaryadye. It was built in 1966 in a closed way(with a tunneling shield). And to the right there is an old collector from 1819, passing under the Alexander Garden. It was reconstructed and is now used as a reserve watercourse in case of severe filling of the collector. Just three years ago, through this tunnel it was possible to reach the confluence with the Moscow River at the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge. But then gratings were installed here and any movement in this tunnel is subject to complex approvals from the FSO.
We are standing at point 4 - at the fork. Point 3 - the beginning of the Shchekotovsky tunnel.
The beauty of Moscow is even underground!
Text: Alexander Ivanov
Photo: found on the Internet
