Voids in the earth's crust are found all over the world, and an underground civilization can actually exist, given the fairly comfortable living conditions underground. The mention of an underground civilization in the myths of different peoples and on different continents is quite common. And the latest scientific discoveries confirm the possibility of life underground. The mysterious underworld exists not only in legends. In recent decades, the number of visitors to the caves has increased markedly. Adventurers and miners are making their way deeper and deeper into the bowels of the Earth, more and more often they come across traces of the activities of mysterious underground inhabitants. 
It turned out that under us there is a whole network of tunnels stretching for thousands of kilometers and enveloping the entire Earth in a network. Polish researcher Jan Paenk claims that a whole network of tunnels has been laid underground that lead to any country. These tunnels are created with the help of high technology, unknown to people, and they pass not only under the surface of the land, but also under the bed of the seas and oceans. The tunnels are not just punched, but as if burnt out in underground rocks, and their walls are a frozen molten rock - smooth as glass and have an extraordinary strength. Jan Paenk met with miners who came across such tunnels while driving shreks. 
According to the Polish scientist and many other researchers, flying saucers rush from one end of the world to the other along these underground communications. (Ufologists have a huge amount of evidence that UFOs fly out of the ground and from the depths of the seas). Such tunnels have also been found in Ecuador, South Australia, the USA, and New Zealand. In addition, vertical, absolutely straight (like an arrow) wells with the same melted walls have been found in many parts of the world. These wells have different depths from tens to several hundred meters. Mexico. Mitla. Mayan underground structures
These structures have a high quality finish and are more like a bunker. The researchers also noticed that, according to some details, one can judge that the Indians did not build, but only restored one of these structures from the blocks lying around in the vicinity. There are especially many stories about the mysterious South American tunnels. Along the solid roads stretching across South America from Ecuador to Chile, archaeologists continually dig out tunnels, the length of which testifies to the highest level of civilization of those who built them. 
In 1991, in the region of the Rio Sinju, a group of Peruvian speleologists discovered a system of underground caves in which traces of human activity were present. So, one of them was equipped with a stone slab rotating on balls. This mechanism for blocking the entrance could only be created by enlightened people. Behind the door stretched a multi-kilometer tunnel. And although several expeditions that have been there have not yet been able to figure out where it leads, there is hope that this mystery will be solved ... Even the famous English traveler and scientist Percy Fossett, who visited South America many times, mentioned in his books about extended caves located near the volcanoes of Popocatepetl and Inlaquatl and in the region of Mount Shasta. Some researchers managed to see fragments of this underground empire. Meanwhile, the most authoritative archaeologists of Peru today have no doubts about the existence of an underground empire: not yet explored by anyone, it, in their understanding, extends under the seas and continents. And ancient buildings rise above the entrances to this grand dungeon in different parts of the world: for example, in Peru, this is the city of Cusco... Of course, not all scientists share the opinion of Peruvian experts. And yet, many facts speak in favor of the underworld, indirectly proving its existence. Dungeons of Cusco There is also an ancient legend associated with gold, which tells of a secret entrance to a vast labyrinth of underground galleries under the collapsed building of the Santo Domingo Cathedral. As evidenced by the Spanish magazine Mas Alla, which specializes in describing all kinds of historical mysteries, this legend, in particular, tells that there are gigantic tunnels in length that cross the vast mountainous territory of Peru and reach Brazil and Ecuador. In the language of the Quechua Indians, they are called "chinkana", which literally means "maze". In these tunnels, the Incas, allegedly deceiving the Spanish conquistadors, hid a significant part of the gold wealth of their empire in the form of large art objects. Even a specific point in Cusco was indicated, where this labyrinth began and where the temple of the Sun once stood. It was gold that glorified Cusco (there is still the only museum in the world dedicated to this noble metal). But it also destroyed him. The Spanish conquistadors, who conquered the city, plundered the temple of the Sun, and all its riches, including the golden statues in the garden, were loaded onto ships and sent to Spain. At the same time, there was also a rumor about the existence of underground halls and galleries, where the Incas allegedly hid part of the ritual gold items. There are pictures of fragments of global dungeons in North America. Cape Perpetua. The gate to the cellar. The world's longest Flint Mammoth Cave, 500 km of underground tunnels. Numerous speleological expeditions have established that Mammoth Cave connects with a number of nearby small caves. And the 1972 expedition discovered that there is a passage from Mammoth Cave to the Flint Ridge cave system. The author of the book about Shambhala, Andrew Thomas, on the basis of a thorough analysis of the stories of American speleologists, claims that there are direct underground passages in the mountains of California that lead to the state of New Mexico. Lost Worlds of Africa There are many kilometers of tunnels under the Sahara desert: from Sebha in Libya to the Ghat oasis near the Algerian border. These tunnels are a huge underground water supply system. Scientists have calculated that the total length of the tunnels is approximately 1600 km. These tunnels were cut into the rock more than five thousand years ago, which coincides approximately with the date of the emergence of the united state of Egypt. Underground tunnels in Malta
Many experts claim that the Maltese Hypogeum was built as a temple, a huge underground temple of death and birth with an intricate system of levels, passages, halls and traps. In addition, the skeletons of 30 thousand people of the late Neolithic era and various artifacts were found in the Hypogee. Now historians insist on recognizing it as the eighth wonder of the world - after all, judging by this mysterious room, a developed civilization existed in Malta long before Stonehenge and the era of the Egyptian pyramids. Many underground passages and tunnels, including prehistoric catacombs, were later included by knight builders in the system of fortifications. As for the network of catacombs near Malta, some ancient sources indicate that it branched not only under the surface of the island: the passages went inland and to the sides, continued under the sea and, according to rumors, stretched all the way to Italy. At least in antiquity, in ancient times, many sources pointed to this. About existence in Russia system of global tunnels was written in his book "The Legend of the LSP" by a speleologist - a researcher studying artificial structures - Pavel Miroshnichenko. The lines of global tunnels he drew on the map of the former USSR went from the Crimea through the Caucasus to the well-known Medveditskaya ridge. In each of these places, groups of ufologists, speleologists, explorers of the unknown discovered fragments of tunnels or mysterious bottomless wells. Since 1997, the Kosmopoisk expedition has carefully studied the notorious Medveditskaya ridge in the Volga region. 
The researchers discovered and mapped an extensive network of tunnels stretching for tens of kilometers. The tunnels have a circular section, sometimes oval, with a diameter of 7 to 20 m, maintaining a constant width and direction along the entire length. The tunnels are located at a depth of 6 to 30 meters from the surface of the earth. As you approach the hill on the Medveditskaya ridge, the diameter of the tunnels increases from 20 to 35 meters, and then to 80 m, and already at the very hill, the diameter of the cavities reaches 120 m, turning under the mountain into a huge hall. Three seven-meter tunnels leave from here at different angles. It seems that the Medveditskaya ridge is a junction, a crossroads where tunnels from different regions converge. Researchers suggest that from here you can get not only to the Caucasus and the Crimea, but also to the northern regions of Russia, to Novaya Zemlya and further to the North American continent. Under the Black Sea city of Gelendzhik, a bottomless mine with a diameter of about one and a half meters with amazingly smooth edges was discovered. Experts unanimously say: it was created using technology unknown to people and has existed for more than one hundred years. The dungeons of the Urals also keep many secrets. The first dungeons on the territory of Kievan Rus arose even before the 10th century, but all this was amateurishness compared to the caves of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. According to the official version, many kilometers of underground passages, cells, tombs and churches were created as an underground monastery. 
Despite the fact that the caves of the Kiev-Pechersk Holy Assumption Lavra have been studied, they keep many secrets. Some corridors have not been used for a very long time due to collapses. This especially applies to the Far Caves, all the exits of which towards the Dnieper have long been abandoned, and in the 1930s they were bricked up and tightly cemented ... Also in Ukraine, in the Ternopil region is the second longest cave in the world "Optimisticheskaya", not so long ago discovered by speleologists. To date, more than 200 kilometers of its passages have been discovered. And it is believed that this is not the limit and perhaps it is connected to other caves that form a single network. Currently under study are gobi caves. Due to their inaccessibility - and the caves are located in the so-called "forbidden territory" associated with Shambhala, the habitat of the highest initiates - the Gobi dungeons were practically not explored. But this is all just a superficial overview. There is no way to even simply list all the mysterious dungeons and tunnels scattered around the world, and, most likely, connected together. The same applies to all the numerous catacombs, which are not just quarries. Their origin goes back thousands of years. The catacombs are also not fully explored and may also be part of a single underground network of tunnels. Legends about the inhabitants of the dungeon It is difficult to find a people who would not have legends about creatures living in the darkness of the dungeons. They were much older than the human race and were descended from representatives of other civilizations that disappeared from the surface of the earth. They possessed secret knowledge and crafts. In relation to people, the inhabitants of the dungeons, as a rule, were hostile. Therefore, it can be assumed that the fairy tales describe the real, and perhaps even today existing, underground world. There are especially many legends about the underworld of Tibet and the Himalayas. Here in the mountains there are tunnels that go deep into the earth. Through them, the “initiate” can travel to the center of the planet and meet with representatives of the ancient civilization. Tibetan lamas say that the ruler of the Underworld is the great King of the World, as he is called in the East. And his kingdom - Agarta, based on the principles of the Golden Age - has existed for at least 60 thousand years. People there do not know evil and do not commit crimes. Science reached an unprecedented flourishing there, therefore the underground people, having reached the incredible heights of knowledge, do not know diseases and are not afraid of any cataclysms. The King of the World wisely manages not only millions of his own underground subjects, but also secretly the entire population of the surface part of the Earth. He knows all the hidden springs of the universe, he comprehends the soul of every human being and reads the great book of fate. The realm of Agartha stretches underground across the entire planet. There is also an opinion that the peoples of Agarta were forced to move to underground living after the universal cataclysm (flood) and the submersion of land under water - the ancient continents that existed in the place of the present oceans. In the underground workshops tireless work is in full swing. Any metals are melted there and products from them are forged. In unknown chariots or other perfect devices, underground inhabitants rush through tunnels laid deep underground. The level of technical development of underground inhabitants exceeds the wildest imagination. But not only wise beings who give advice to "initiates" live in the underworld of India. Ancient Indian legends tell of the mysterious kingdom of the Nagas, hidden in the depths of the mountains. It is inhabited by snake people who keep countless treasures in their caves. Cold-blooded as snakes, these creatures are incapable of experiencing human feelings. They cannot warm themselves and steal warmth, bodily and spiritual, from other living beings. Hindus have legends about nagas - snake-like creatures that live on land, in water or underground. In South America, there are amazing caves connected by endless intricate passages - the so-called chinkanas. The legends of the Indians say that snake people live in their depths. These caves are practically unexplored. By order of the authorities, all entrances to them are tightly closed with bars. Dozens of adventurers have already disappeared without a trace in Chinkanas. Some tried to penetrate the dark depths out of curiosity, others out of a thirst for profit: according to legend, Inca treasures are hidden in chinkanas. Only a few managed to get out of the terrible caves. But even these “lucky ones” were permanently damaged in their minds. From the incoherent stories of the survivors, one can understand that they met strange creatures in the depths of the earth. These inhabitants of the underworld were both human and snake-like at the same time. A sublatitudinal tunnel stretching from the Crimea to the east in the region of the Ural Mountains intersects with another, stretched from north to east. It is along this tunnel that you can hear stories about "divya people", who at the beginning of the last century went out to the locals. "Divya people", - is told in epics, common in the Urals, - they live in the Ural Mountains, they have exits to the world through caves. Their culture is great. "Divya people" are small in stature, very beautiful and with a pleasant voice, but only the elite can hear them ... Among a number of researchers of the underworld, there is a strong opinion that the entrances to the underground cities of humanoid inhabitants exist in the Pamirs and even at the poles of the Arctic and Antarctica. life underground According to geologists, there is more water underground than in the entire World Ocean, and not all of it is in a bound state, i.e. only part of the water is part of the minerals and rocks. To date, underground seas, lakes and rivers have been discovered. 
It has been suggested that the waters of the World Ocean are connected with the underground water system, and accordingly, not only the circulation and exchange of water between them takes place, but also the exchange of biological species. Unfortunately, this area remains completely unexplored to date. 
To believe or not to believe? To believe or not to believe all these stories? Any sane person will answer: "Do not believe!" But not everything is so clear. Let's try to think logically. Let's think about how real a full-fledged human life underground is? Could there be an unknown culture or even a civilization next to us - or rather, below us - managing to limit contact with terrestrial humanity to a minimum? Staying unnoticed? Is it possible? Does such "living" contradict common sense? In principle, a person can exist underground, and it would be pretty good if there was money. Suffice it to recall the bunker house that Tom Cruise is currently building: the megastar plans to hide in his underground dwelling from aliens who, in his opinion, should soon attack our Earth. 
In less "illuminated", but no less solid bunker cities, the "chosen ones" are preparing in the event of an atomic war to wait out the nuclear winter and the post-radiation period - and this is a period during which more than one generation will rise to its feet! 
Moreover, in China and Spain today, many thousands of people do not live in houses, but in comfortable caves with all amenities. True, these cave dwellers continue to actively contact the outside world and take part in terrestrial life. 
But, perhaps, the most striking example of the adaptability of a huge number of people (what is there - a whole civilization!) To the "lower" world is the underground city of Derinkuyu. Derinkuyu I have already made a post about the ancient underground city of Derinkuyu, which is located in the picturesque Turkish area of Cappadocia. http://www.site/blogs/vokrug_sveta/55502_podzemnyj_gorod_derinkuyu Of course, I don’t want to repeat myself, but I also can’t help but remember him here. 
Derinkuyu, which means "deep wells", takes its name from the small Turkish town currently located above it. For a long time, no one thought about the purpose of these strangest wells, until in 1963 one of the local residents, who discovered a strange crack in his basement from which fresh air was drawn, showed a healthy curiosity. As a result, a multi-tiered underground city was found, numerous rooms and galleries of which, connected with each other by passages, tens of kilometers long, were hollowed out in the rocks ... Already during the excavation of the upper tiers of Derinkuyu, it became clear: this was the discovery of the century. In the underground city, scientists discovered objects of the material culture of the Hittites, the great Indo-European people who competed with the Egyptians for dominance in Asia Minor. Hittite kingdom, founded in the XVIII century BC. e., in the XII century BC. e. sank into the unknown. That is why the discovery of a whole city of the Hittites became a real sensation. In addition, it turned out that the giant underground city is only part of a colossal labyrinth under the Anatolian plateau. Scientists have come to the conclusion that underground construction has been carried out for at least nine (!) Centuries. Moreover, these were not just earthworks, albeit of a colossal volume. Ancient architects equipped the underground empire with a life-support system, the perfection of which still amazes today. Everything here was thought out to the smallest detail: rooms for animals, warehouses for food, rooms for cooking and eating, for sleeping, for meetings ... At the same time, religious temples and schools were not forgotten. A precisely calculated blocking device made it easy to block the entrances to the dungeon with granite doors. And the ventilation system that supplied the city with fresh air continues to function flawlessly to this day! Derinkuyu is not the only underground city found in Turkey. 300 kilometers southeast of Ankara, Turkish archaeologists have unearthed another one, the creation of which dates back to the 7th century BC. e. Now it is called by the name of the nearby village - Kaymakli. On its seven floors, going deep into the earth, there are two-room "apartments" with compartments for food and food storage. Bathtubs - smooth recesses in the stone - were designed to be filled with water from underground sources. And at any time of the year, thanks to a precisely calculated system of ventilation shafts, a constant temperature of +27 C was maintained in the premises.
Incredible Facts
Many have heard that people sometimes go to live in caves, abandoned mines or underground tunnels. In the literature one can often find tales of underground people. However, underground cities exist not only in novels and films. They are very real.
Underground cities were built primarily to protect against enemies, wild animals, weather, and even illegal activities. find out about the most interesting underground cities in the world and interesting facts related to them.
1) Secret underground city in Beijing, China
Since 1969 and over the next decade by order Mao Tse-tung in Beijing began to build an underground emergency shelter for the government. This shelter stretched under Beijing for a distance 30 kilometers. The giant city was built during the period of the Sino-Soviet split, and its only purpose was to defend in case of war.
Entrance to the Beijing Underground City
This underground city contained shops, restaurants, schools, theatres, hairdressers and even a roller skating rink. In the city one could also find about thousands of bomb shelters, and he could simultaneously accommodate up to 40 percent residents of Beijing in case of war.
Today, tourists roam the underground streets of Beijing
There were rumors that houses in Beijing have secret hatches, which allowed residents to quickly descend into this underground complex in case of danger. In 2000, the giant underground city was officially opened to tourists, and some of its shelters are used as youth hostels.
2) Putin's underground city Yamantau, Russia
Close to ski resort "Abzakovo", 60 kilometers from Magnitogorsk, which is in the south of the Urals, according to some sources, is located secret underground city for members of the Russian government. The secret base is covered with a lot of rumors and assumptions, including, they say that this object was started to be built during the Cold War.
Ski resort "Abzakovo", South Ural, Russia
President Putin visiting a ski resort "Abzakovo" quite often, however, he never answered the questions why this particular place attracts the president so much. Rumors spread that it was not skiing that was the main reason for coming, but construction of a secret underground city on Mount Yamantau.
Mount Yamantau in Bashkortostan
Talking about the city in the 1990s in the American and other foreign press. Foreign journalists tried to get at least some details from officials, but their attempts were unsuccessful. It is very likely that the articles themselves were based more on hearsay than on real facts.
3) Underground city near Moscow, Russia
Everyone knows that Moscow is all cut up underground tunnels, passages and subway structures, which in Soviet times was considered the most beautiful, fastest and largest metro in the world. Much has changed today, but people still talk about mysteries of the underground city near Moscow- a series of underground bunkers built back in Soviet times, and maybe even earlier.
"Secret Subway" Moscow really exists and is intended, first of all, for the military and members of the government in case of a nuclear war or other dangerous situations. Secret lines connect major government facilities, including the Kremlin, the building of the Ministry of Defense and so on.
Secret subway lines, according to some very curious researchers of this issue, no different from the main lines. Why not connect some of these lines to the main lines, given how busy the Moscow metro is today? Apparently, there are reasons for this, and the underground city is waiting in the wings.
4) Rock City Setenil de las Bodegas, Spain
Unlike many other underground cities, this city in Spain lives a full life and accommodates about 3 thousand inhabitants. Some of the houses in this city are not completely underground, but are carved into the rock, which makes the city landscapes especially unusual. The houses seem to be buried in stones.
Thanks to such unusual buildings, the town attracts many tourists who come here to see unique cave houses. In ancient times, the city served as a fortress.
5) Cave city Chufut-Kale, Crimea
This cave city, located in the Crimea, was built during the early Middle Ages, and although most of it turned into ruins, some ancient buildings still remained: caves, the mausoleum of the daughter of Khan Tokhtamysh, gates and others.
Entrances to the underground dwellings of the ghost town of Chufut-Kale
Initially, the city was inhabited Alans- Iranian-speaking tribes, later moved here Cumans, but in the 14th century started flocking here Karaites, and by the time of the formation of the Crimean Khanate, most likely, they were the main inhabitants. At one time, the khan of the independent Crimea even permanently lived in Chufut-Kale. Late 19th century the city was completely abandoned by the inhabitants.
6) Secret cellars of Moose-Jo gangsters, Canada
Underground cities were sometimes built not at all for protection during military conflicts, but for protection during harsh weather conditions. For example, the city of Moose Jaw in central Canada has a series of tunnels and underpasses that were built to keep workers warm. However, these underground premises very soon after construction began to be used for illegal purposes.
Tunnels Moose Jaw chosen criminal figures, smugglers and bandits during Prohibition in the United States. The underground city turned into a mini Las Vegas and hosted illegal establishments where casinos and prostitution flourished. They say that Chicago mobster Al Capone had something to do with these basements, so they began to call them "Chicago Connection".
Today in the "Chicago connection" - a museum where there is a weapons room, a wine cellar and many interesting things from the time of gangsters
7) The Mysterious City of the Gods in Egypt
Great Pyramids of Giza- the only one of the wonders of the ancient world that has come down to us. Many researchers believe that something incredible is located under the Giza plateau, namely series of underground tunnels and chambers.
Beginning since 1978, the researchers began to map out the outlines of a massive underground complex that could potentially be a huge underground city.
Known by the name "City of the Gods", this city still hides many secrets. Since it is located directly under one of the most important historical monuments in the world, the integrity of which no one will disturb, it is unlikely that these secrets will be easily opened in the near future.
Opponents of the theory of the City of the Gods are convinced that there is no underground city under the pyramids, and the story about it was invented, to attract more tourists.
8) Coober Pedy Underground Gem City, Australia
coober pedy is a city that is still inhabited. It is located in the desert part of central Australia, and is home to about 1600 inhabitants. The city is considered "capital of opal", since more of this semi-precious stone is mined here than anywhere else on the planet.
Entrance to the Coober Pedy dungeon: it's hard to imagine what's hiding underground
The city is located underground houses - dugouts, which were dug to protect themselves from the scorching desert sun, as well as to protect children from wild dingo dogs and local natives.
Opal deposits were first discovered in Coober Pedy in 1915, since then these places have been inhabited by gemstone hunters. If you have an opal jewelry, there is every chance that this the stone was brought from Australia, or rather, from the mines of Coober Pedy. Under the ground you can find not only the dwellings of local residents, but also restaurants, shops and even a church and a cemetery!
9) Island City with Underground Restaurants Kish, Iran
In the dungeon Kish city in Iran hides a mysterious city that is so shrouded in mystery that it doesn't even have an official name. Some people call this city Kariz, however, tourists often call it the Underground City of Kish. Underground premises have a total area of about 10,000 square meters.
This dungeon is more than 2.5 thousand years old and was originally used as reservoir and water supply system. Like many other ancient cities, this city has been renovated and turned into a tourist site. Today here you can find cozy underground restaurants, shops and other establishments.
10) Burlington Underground Bunker, England
There is also a secret underground city in England, it got the name Burlington. This city was built in the 1950s for the British government to be able to take cover in the event of a nuclear war. The dungeon is not very large - only a thousand square meters, but it could easily fit about 4 thousand people.
The city had underground highways, railway stations, hospitals, and even an underground lake for storing drinking water. There was also a BBC station in the city so that the Prime Minister could address those who were left upstairs. Burlington is on standby until until 1991 after which the Cold War ended.
Which city has an underground tram?
Underground cities and tunnels can be used by underground transport, in particular trams and trolleybuses, and not just metro trains. Underground trams are available in many cities, for example:
Krivoy Rog, Ukraine
High-speed underground tram in Volgograd, Russia
It is known that many Russian rich people build, in addition to ground dwellings, entire underground bunkers, mainly for personal safety.
Plan of underground Moscow. Soon the main Russian city will grow not up, but down
In Yakutia (Eastern Siberia), on the site of a man-made mine crater, they want to build an underground city Eco-City 2020 with a capacity of 100 thousand people
You can read about other amazing underground cities and caves.
Bunkers, dungeons, hiding places... Deep underground fortresses and vast cave cities. Flickering lights in a modern shopping center and the gray walls of prehistoric pyramid corridors. Salvation from nuclear war or death from the curse of the pharaohs. Heaps of bones in the catacombs and crowds of people in the subway. Bright light and stormy work in a secret laboratory or darkness and silence in ancient cave temples. The cries of heretics in the dungeons of the Inquisition and the bloody showdown of youth gangs in the basements. Such is the world of dungeons - man-made and full of secrets.
And although the dungeons are the creations of human hands, they are often more dangerous than natural caves. Here, pipes with boiling water burst, booby traps explode or floors fall through and spikes pop out in secret passages. Maniacs routinely butcher victims in dark corners, and adherents of secret sects eliminate random witnesses. Technical power does not guarantee complete protection from natural forces: in the dungeons, the collapse of the vault, flooding with groundwater, or a breakthrough of poisonous gas from the bowels of the planet can occur. But there are much more mysteries in the dungeons of ancient civilizations than in ordinary natural caves.
Communal Horrors
A whole underground world is hidden under any modern city - a network of tunnels with life support systems. Additionally, under each house there is a basement - concrete catacombs. Rusty pipes and wheel valves, dusty light bulbs and wires. Despite the outward banality, walking through man-made dungeons is not safe. When funds for repairs ran out, many dungeons fell into an abandoned state, and communications in them wore out. Now old pipes can burst at any second, dousing a person with boiling water from a hot water supply or superheated steam from a heating plant. Power wires with insulation that has crumbled from time to time spark and threaten with electric shock. A burst sewer pipe fills the catacombs with a thick brown liquid. Leakage from gas pipes is invisible, but the slightest spark is enough to cause an explosion.
Many dungeons were built with economy in mind rather than ease of maintenance. Therefore, in many catacombs, one has to squeeze sideways in narrow corridors or dive under a concrete lintel in doorways. Most of the passages are clogged with pipes and wires, leaving very little free space. The city dungeons are stuffy, dirty and often stinking. The water in the pipes is noisy, constantly reminding of the danger of a breakthrough and flooding.
Abandoned city basements are often chosen by criminal elements, so there is a chance to make a horror movie with yourself in the lead role. Basements are also home to homeless people. The smell of rotten food from garbage heaps and laundry that has not been washed for a long time completes the picture of a thick layer of dirt, cobwebs and dust. But in urban dungeons, flies, rats, cockroaches, spiders and other living creatures such as wood lice and caterpillars comfortably live and breed (not to mention all sorts of infectious bacteria). Such are urban dungeons - outcasts of urbanization and at the same time an indispensable part of modern megacities.
mines
Man's greed is boundless: in pursuit of minerals, he dug up the bowels of the planet far and wide. The gold mines of South Africa go deepest underground - up to 5 kilometers at the Tau Tona mine. At such a depth, the temperature in the mines reaches 60-80 ºC, ventilation works poorly, and air humidity reaches 97-98%. A real hell in which blacks mine gold for white masters.
No better work in the coal mines. When crushing and extracting coal, miners constantly breathe coal dust, which over decades leads to silicosis of the lungs with a bloody cough. Methane constantly accumulates in coal mines, causing underground explosions and fires with massive roof collapses at the slightest spark. The largest disaster of its kind in the world was a methane explosion at the Raspadskaya mine in 2010, when all mine workings with a total length of 300 kilometers were destroyed and 91 miners died.
In general, coal mines like to burn and sometimes burn for a very long time and strongly: in 2004, China finally put out a 130-year-old fire at the Liuhuangou coal field, which burned 1.8 million tons of coal per year, 100 thousand tons of harmful gases were released into the atmosphere and 40 tons of ash settled on the ground. In addition to coal dust, toxic gases from the bowels of the Earth are concentrated in the stuffy stale air of the mines, which are also not good for health. Fans of wandering through abandoned mines should remember that wooden roofing and props rot and collapse over time, so the walls and ceiling of the mine can collapse at the most inopportune moment.
Sometimes abandoned mines find a second, even more glorious life. Beneath many major cities, there is a network of catacombs, the result of chaotic, haphazard, but massive limestone mining. The most extensive catacombs with a total length of 1.5-2 thousand kilometers are located near Odessa, although the Parisian catacombs are more popular. The reason for this was a combination of several factors: the aura of a giant cemetery with bones and skulls of millions of people, a vast and intricate labyrinth of passages with the possibility of getting lost, and heavy stone walls evoking the atmosphere of medieval castles. Of the many films about the Parisian catacombs, it is worth noting the Catacombs and. In the first film, the idea of wandering in an underground labyrinth with maniacs is presented in an original and non-standard way, in the second - the idea of ancient powerful artifacts of secret sects with a deep philosophical meaning.
Cave cities, bunkers and underground dwellers
Until a person learned how to build multi-storey buildings, he actively used natural mountains for housing, cutting down corridors, rooms and stairs inside them. Entire underground cities are known all over the world, from the USA to Vietnam.
But the most life-threatening dungeons were built in China. If in other countries such cities were hewn, for example, in granite or limestone, then in China - in loess rocks. This is, in fact, compressed sand, characterized by increased fragility and increased water absorption. The slightest tremor causes a mass collapse of loess massifs, which bury people under them. Yes, there is an earthquake! When water hits, the loess shrinks, becomes heavier and crumbles. Therefore, even ordinary rain is fraught with the appearance of failures and craters for loess dungeons. When dry, loess dwellings emit a lot of dust at the slightest movement, which is very harmful to health. Cave cities were used only as a place to sleep, cook food and sometimes as a temporary shelter.
The next level of underground life are completely isolated bunkers. In this case, the surface of the Earth is unsuitable for life and people are sitting in bomb shelters without getting out. The main disadvantage and vulnerability of bunkers is the limited supply of food. In the movie "Air", people sleep in suspended animation capsules, waiting for the surface of the Earth to be cleared. Only two technicians wake up once a year for one hour for maintenance and inspection. But the capsule of one of the technicians suddenly breaks and now someone has to die - the air in the sealed bunker is only for one hour. The re-cleaned air in the bunker will be automatically launched exactly one year later.
Permanently living underground people are very popular in art, but implausible from the point of view of science. Without sunlight and photosynthesis, the existence of the biosphere familiar to us is impossible. Underground there is life on chemosynthesis, but its productivity is too small even for individuals - not to mention entire underground cities. Even turning people into dwarfs does not help to “pull an owl on the globe” - except to reduce people to the size of underground crayfish. Without photosynthetic plants, it is not clear where the air for the inhabitants of underground cities comes from. You can, of course, prescribe powerful ventilation from the surface, but this is already cheating and in general - then what is the point for people to sit underground with a surface favorable for life?
There are even more misunderstandings with the metallurgy of all kinds of gnomes - where does the smoke from the forge go? If Dwarf Moria has only a few carefully camouflaged exits, then the smoke from metallurgy should fill and stagnate in the underground chambers. In the novel Metro 2033, people in the Moscow subway are fed from mushroom plantations. Muscovites can appreciate the size of the subway, where, in addition to plantations, 50,000 people will live permanently. In the movie The City of Ember: Escape, it is not explained at all where the inhabitants of the city get their food from.
At eight, residents of a multi-storey building during a nuclear bombardment burst into the personal bunker of a firefighter who did not have time to slam the door. As famine approaches, the situation escalates. The owner of the bunker is severely beaten, tied up and deprived of rations for hiding a room with an additional supply of food. Time passes, stocks decrease even more, and then the most resolute ones seize power. Dictatorship is replacing the communist democracy “everyone eats equally”. Now a group of rulers manages all the food, and the rest, for the sake of a “piece of bread”, are forced to humiliate themselves and serve the “masters”. At the end of the film, a natural revolt of the "cattle" takes place, a bloody massacre and only one girl runs upstairs in a chemical protection suit - a lifeless surface contaminated with radiation turned out to be better than an underground nightmare.
Prisoners of dungeons can be attributed to involuntary underground inhabitants, because this is an indispensable attribute of knightly castles. For years, prisoners do not know the sunlight and fresh air, they sit in stuffy, damp and cold stone bags deep underground, and only the ringing of rusty chains breaks the grave silence. The jailer may not come, then the prisoner is free to scream and knock on the thick stone walls as much as he likes - no one will hear how he is dying of hunger and thirst. As prisons, dungeons have two advantages: the difficulty of escaping and the harsh conditions of detention. Unlike land-based prisons, such dungeons are tens of meters away from the surface of the earth, and even rock. Try to make your way to freedom, having only a fragment of a knife as a handy tool!
It is even worse than underground dungeons to be buried alive. In the movie Buried Alive, Iraqi militants buried a captive American driver in a coffin, leaving him with only a flashlight and a mobile phone to call home for ransom. If the ransom is not paid, he will die from lack of air. But the American government does not want to be led by the terrorists, and the company's management is only concerned with the speedy dismissal of its employee in trouble in order to save money on insurance.
You can remember the movie "Kill Bill" here. True, here the ending turned out to be happy: with the help of Chinese fist art, the heroine was able to break the wooden lid of the coffin and break through a layer of still loose earth to the surface. Salvation from the underworld in the literal sense of the word turned out to be a return from the other world.
nuclear dungeons
Most dungeons were formed as a result of mechanical extraction of rock from the bowels of the Earth, but there are three very special types. To obtain combustible gas, shale or low-quality coal is sometimes specially set on fire. The result is underground cavities that are very reminiscent of pyrogenic caves (already in DARKER). In another method of mining, hot water is pumped into sulfur-containing rocks, and then a solution with sulfur is pumped out. The underground voids formed as a result of explosions stand apart, and among them are nuclear dungeons.
The main disadvantage of nuclear testing is the strong radiation contamination of the surrounding area. Therefore, over time, under pressure from environmentalists, the countries of the world gradually switched to underground nuclear explosions, when radiation does not reach the surface. A nuclear bomb is laid in a deep adit and immured on top. During an underground nuclear explosion, a spherical cavity of considerable diameter is formed, the surface of which is covered with a crust of remelting from a radioactive substance, and the air inside is saturated with radiation. Nuclear cavities are the healthiest types of dungeons and are of course never visited by humans.
Cave Dungeons
It happens that when digging dungeons, a person goes into natural caves (for example, the Odessa catacombs have exits to very ancient and deep natural caves). Often people use existing natural voids, expanding and rebuilding them to suit their needs: for example, deposits of polymetallic ores were discovered and developed right inside the Chagyrskaya cave in Altai, adding mine workings to natural voids. The theme of convicts in the mine caves is interestingly revealed in the fantastic horror film "Chthon". Abandoned dungeons are often exposed to natural forces and become indistinguishable from real caves.
Of these mixed types of caves, the most interesting are found on the coast of the Aegean Sea. The waves of the seas, lakes and rivers attack the coastal rocks every day, especially quickly destroying soft rocks such as limestone. Over time, under the impact of the waves, grottoes appear - hemispherical depressions in the coastal cliffs. Gradually, these grottoes deepen, collapse, and in their place coastal caves are formed - long tunnels that go deep into the rocks, partially filled with water. Sometimes the vaults of sea caves collapse, revealing small lakes connected to the sea by an underground passage.
At the dawn of ancient Greek history, such sea grottoes were chosen by local pirates. They provided them with a secret refuge from patrol ships, which were usually larger and heavier than pirate boats and could not carefully survey the winding shallow coast. However, the path to the sea grottoes was dangerous even without government patrols.
The combination of strong currents with many shoals, rocks, reefs and stones led to the formation of a seething mess of waves, shafts, whirlpools and breakers. Before the invention of engines and iron ships, strong currents could break wooden sailing and oar boats on rocks and reefs, and drag the crew down to the bottom. For transportation of prey or emergency escape from sea grottoes, pirates dug underground passages to the surface or, in the event of a collapse of the vault, carved steps in limestone rock. The floor of the coastal caves was covered with a layer of water, and some were even half or completely flooded. Therefore, stone moorings for ships and sometimes even temporary warehouses for mining were built in the grottoes themselves - a kind of prototype of later secret underground moorings for strategic submarines of the USA and the USSR.
However, sea grottoes are not safe. Water-washed walls can suddenly collapse. The collapse of sea caves, in addition to the death of people inside, is fraught with sudden failures on the surface. The noise and turbulence of the waves hollowly fills the closed space. At high tides, the entrances to some caves are below the water level and become temporarily inaccessible. During storms, some coastal caves are overwhelmed and filled with waves hitting stone.
Like the hideouts of pirates, sea caves were sometimes used to store treasures (at least according to the legends). In the 1930s, excavations in a coastal cave unearthed the remains of two treasure hunters who entered the coastal cave of Lundy Island on the northwest coast of England in search of the treasure of William de Morisco, who owned Lundy in the 13th century and from there piracy in British waters. However, instead of fabulous riches, the treasure hunters found their death: a sudden collapse blocked the exit from the cave, and with the tide, the water filled the cave and people drowned.
Aeolian caves served as a source of inspiration, and sometimes the beginning of desert cities. This is the exact opposite of sea caves. Sand instead of water, the whistle of the wind instead of the lapping of waves, the dryness of the desert instead of coastal moisture.
Aeolian caves appeared as a result of the work of the wind. In arid regions, the wind picks up and carries with it a huge amount of sand. At high speed, grains of sand hit the rocks like shot, eventually forming hemispherical recesses - aeolian grottoes. The sandy wind begins to concentrate in the grottoes and gradually deepens them into eolian caves - dead-end tunnels deep into the mountains. Sometimes eolian caves pierce mountains through, forming eolian arches. However, they are also short-lived - the upper part of the arches often collapses, dividing the once single rock or mountain into two parts. So, in addition to sand shot, there is always the danger of an aeolian cave collapsing.
With a short length of up to 6-7 meters, eolian caves have wide and high entrances through which the wind freely penetrates. During the day, aeolian caves provide good shelter from the sun's rays, but in a dust storm they turn into a death trap. Inside through the entrance is a concentrated stream of sand-saturated wind. Sand grains at high speed can slash the face into blood or damage the eyes. Despite the danger, traces of human carvings and expansions have been found in some eolian caves - probably used for lodging or storing valuables.
Continue reading the article in the next issue.
Dungeons of the world
That is how the theme of this chapter should be carefully formulated, because everyone knows that no one will embrace the immensity.
"CAPITAL OF OUR COUNTRY, MOSCOW"
The city was founded in 1147, when Prince Yuri Dolgoruky killed the local boyar Stepan Kuchka and seized his estate. Since then, Moscow has been repeatedly destroyed by enemies and rebuilt again. Wooden houses were replaced by stone ones on solid foundations deepened into the ground. The defensive function was performed by monasteries with underground passages. Usually, the beginning of the creation of a network of these passages is attributed to the 15th century. The underground labyrinths of the Kremlin, Borovitsky Hill and Kitai-gorod, Simonov, Donskoy, Chudov and other monasteries were discovered, but little explored.
Not far from the Kitai-Gorod metro station, the John the Baptist Convent, founded in the 15th century, is still preserved. This monastery had a sad reputation: women of noble birth were forcibly tonsured there - so selfish relatives seized their shares in the inheritance. In 1610, the former Tsarina Maria Petrovna Shuiskaya was tonsured here, who was forcibly separated from her husband, the deposed Tsar Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky. In 1620, the nun Paraskeva died - in the world Pelageya Mikhailovna - the second wife of the eldest son of Ivan the Terrible. The mysterious Dosifeya, “the real Princess Tarakanova,” and the evil landowner Saltychikha, who sadistically killed serf beauties, were kept here.
In this monastery, under the guise of madmen, women criminals and political criminals were brought from the Detective Department. Adherents of the old rite, who did not want to renounce their faith, were brought here from the schismatic office. Some were kept in "stone bags" under strict supervision, while others skillfully converted even nuns to their faith. Such were the whips of Akulina Lupkin and Agafya Karpova, who set up a "God's house" in their cells for the joy of the whips. Akulina died a natural death, and Agafya was executed in 1743.
There are also legends about the dungeons of the Novodevichy Convent in Khamovniki. These are mainly crypts, some of which have been discovered and studied by scientists. The terrible legend about the last abbess of the monastery, Leonida Ozerova, who did not want to give the Bolsheviks the church wealth accumulated over the centuries, excites the imagination and went underground with the treasures. Some say that Leonida died guarding objects sacred to her, others that she only hid them, and she herself went out through the underground passage and disappeared. And this is quite likely, since some of those valuables later turned up in private collections.
It must be admitted that there are much more legends about the Moscow dungeons than they themselves have been explored. An interesting question is about the underground passage under the Moscow River. Under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, the master Azancheev made several attempts to dig it. The twice unfinished passage was flooded, the documents are silent about the future, but it is known that Azancheev was granted the nobility. On this basis, many conclude that this move was built after all. There are persistent rumors about secret passages under the Tsaritsyno estate (in its very real vast basements there are now exhibition halls), about the Masonic dungeons of the Menshikov Tower, about the Dorogomilov quarries ...
In the area of \u200b\u200b"Kropotkinskaya" lies the terrible Chertolye, which received its name from the Chertoryy stream, which flowed where Sivtsev Vrazhek lane is now. In high water, the stream overflowed, but when the water subsided, potholes and potholes remained on the banks of the stream, like the devil dug.
The Oprichny yard was located in this area: there were torture huts, casemates, scaffolds with chopping blocks. Diggers claim that deep underground there are voids, passages and galleries - the remains of the terrible prisons of Ivan the Terrible.
You can come across the statement, they say, from the basement of any house within the Garden Ring, you can get anywhere, even to the Moscow metro. Indeed, the basements of old houses, especially church and manor houses, often have walled-up passages leading to God knows where. Sometimes the building itself is no longer there, but the dungeons with passages have been preserved, and stubborn diggers manage to get to the bottom of it.
Back in 1912, newspapers wrote about the discovery of underground passages in Bogoslovsky Lane, on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, under the house of the Yusupov princes at the Red Gate, between the Novodevichy Convent and the Gübner manufactory, under the Donskoy Monastery, the Golitsyn Hospital and the Neskuchny Garden ...
The man who laid his life on the study of the mysterious underground world of Moscow was called Ignatiy Yakovlevich Stelletsky.
He was born in 1878 in the Ekaterinoslav province in the family of a teacher. After graduating from the Kiev Theological Academy, he left to work as a teacher in Palestine - the land of "a thousand caves". There, Stelletsky became interested in archeology and, returning to Moscow, organized the Commission for the Study of Underground Antiquities and himself became its chairman. He collected traditions, legends, rumors, eyewitness accounts and, relying on them, conducted research. He discovered underground passages from the Round Tower of the Kitaigorod Wall, from the Tainitskaya Tower of the Simonov Monastery and the Taininskaya Tower of the Kremlin, a white-stone passage from the corner Arsenal Tower of the Kremlin, voids in the depths of Borovitsky Hill, under Nikolskaya, Troitskaya, Spasskaya and the terrible Beklemisheva Tower, in the basement prison of which once pulled out the tongue of the boyar Beklemishev.
His whole life's work was the search for the legendary library of Ivan the Terrible - a collection of books brought from Constantinople by the king's grandmother - the Byzantine princess Sophia Paleolog. The scientist believed that the books were hidden somewhere in one of the numerous dungeons of the Kremlin or very close to it. Stelletsky died in 1949 without finding his Liberia. He was buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery, but the grave has not been preserved. His library and numerous records also perished. The main work of the scientist "Dead books in the Moscow cache" was published only in 1993.
Excavations in the Kremlin were also carried out later, but their results were not advertised. In 1978, while digging a trench near the Grand Kremlin Palace, they dug up an underground room of about nine square meters with brick vaults, where a human skeleton lay. In the early 1980s, a 40-meter tunnel clogged with earth was excavated, the walls of which were decorated with multi-colored tiles.
In 1989, on the site where one of the churches of the exploded Chudov Monastery used to rise, an old crypt was discovered. In a stone sarcophagus lay a human-sized wax doll dressed in a military uniform. It was the burial place of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who died in 1905 in the explosion of a bomb thrown by Kalyaev. Since there was little left of the body, a doll dressed in the uniform of Sergei Alexandrovich was placed in the sarcophagus, and the remains were collected in a vessel and placed at the head.
« 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 great 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 ..."(I. Stelletsky)
Now Stelletsky's dream has come true: there is such a museum! This is the Museum of Archeology of Moscow on Manezhnaya Square. It is located underground at a depth of seven meters at the site of archaeological excavations of the nineties. The most remarkable part of the exposition is the pillars of the ancient Voskresensky bridge across the Neglinka from the time of Ivan the Terrible. In addition, the museum presents the most interesting artifacts discovered by archaeologists: items of medieval life and weapons of Muscovites, a collection of tiles, valuable items from unclaimed treasures, religious objects from the necropolis of the Moiseevsky Monastery.
Maps and descriptions of underground Moscow began to be compiled from the end of the 18th century. What is documented is mainly wells, channels of rivers and streams piped into pipes, sewers, that is, structures of a purely utilitarian purpose.
The most famous everyday writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky spoke a lot about underground Moscow. The subject of his research was underground taverns and dens, as well as the bed of the Neglinka River. These places were dirty in all respects, but Neglinka could generally be considered the Moscow analogue of the Roman cloaca.
The first attempts to build a sewage system in Moscow were made as early as the 14th century: at that time, a canal was dug from the Kremlin to the ill-fated Neglinka to drain sewage.
The townspeople were supposed to drain sewage into cesspools, from where they were scooped up by goldsmiths-sewage workers and taken out of the city in tubs. But the goldsmiths had to be paid, so the irresponsible townspeople continually strove to dump the garbage somewhere far away from their eyes or dig a canal under the house to drain all the dirt into the nearby river. So the Neglinka and Samoteka were completely ruined, and the Yauza and the Moskva River were pretty polluted: in order to avoid the stench, small rivers had to be blocked with vaults and cleaned underground.
In 1874, the “Design outlines of the sewerage of the city of Moscow” were presented to the Moscow City Duma, which were discussed for a long time, but were never approved. The laying of the sewer network began only twenty years later under the mayor Nikolai Alekseev, a man of vigorous activity and a great mind. Since then, sewerage has been constantly built and expanded, and today its total length is equal to the distance from Moscow to Novosibirsk. More information about the history of the Moscow sewerage will be told to those who wish at the Museum of Water in Krutitsy, located in the building of an old pumping station.
Museum visitors will not be taken to the sewer, but Gilyarovsky went down there and left us a vivid description of what is underground. Finding two brave escorts, Uncle Gilyai climbed into the fetid Moscow sewer through a hatch not far from Trubnaya Square. The underground channel was clogged with mud, and "something kept slipping underfoot." What it was, Gilyarovsky was even afraid to think about, because once he himself witnessed how they tried to dump a still alive, albeit deafened person into the dirty and smelly waters of the Neglinka. “True, I say: we go after people,” the guide confirmed his fears. A couple of years later, when clearing the channel, bones “like human ones” were indeed found.
These unfortunates could have been drugged, robbed and killed in one of the underground taverns located right there, near the modern Trubnaya Square. “... Deep in the ground, under the whole house between Grachevka and Tsvetnoy Boulevard, there was a huge basement floor, all completely occupied by one tavern, the most desperate robbery place where the underworld had fun to the point of insensibility ...” The upper, “front” part of this tavern was called Hell, and lower - the Underworld. The police did not look here, there were no detours, and they would not have led anywhere: under the house there were underground passages left from the Mytishchi water pipeline, built back in Catherine's time, the above-ground parts of which (Rostokinsky aqueduct and Alekseevsky water pump) are considered famous Moscow sights.
« The story of the first assassination attempt on Alexander II on April 4, 1866 is connected with the tavern "Hell". Meetings were held here, at which a plan of attack on the tsar was developed ... The organizer and soul of the circle was the student Ishutin, who headed the group that lodged in the house of the petty bourgeois Ipatova on Bolshoy Spassky Lane, in Karetny Ryad. By the name of the house, this group was called Ipatovtsy. Here the idea of regicide was born, unknown to other members of the "Organization" ... Among them was Karakozov, who unsuccessfully shot at the king". (V. Gilyarovsky)
Moscow diggers love to travel along the Neglinka riverbed and along the old collectors. Sometimes there are excursions to the safest places for extreme people with good health and strong nerves.
Those who want to avoid extreme sports can also come into contact with the old Moscow sewerage, and at the same time they do not even have to pay.
At the intersection of Pokrovka and Chistoprudny Boulevard stands the profitable house of the grain merchant F.S. Rakhmanov, built at the very end of the 19th century. On the side, behind the alley, there is a long and very steep staircase leading deep underground to the oldest toilet in Moscow.
This is the only surviving and still operating of the ten “retirades” opened simultaneously with the laying of the first stage of the Moscow sewerage system.
Other dungeons of Moscow of a completely different purpose, which were secret in the past, are also open to visitors. Bunker-42 on Taganka, located at a depth of 60 meters underground, began to be built in the early fifties and worked for 20 years. There were always 300-500 people here, air regeneration and purification systems, sewerage and other amenities worked. The maximum capacity of the bunker is 3,000 people for three months. In the 80s, the bunker was abandoned, then bought by a commercial organization and turned into a great attraction. Preserved tunnels with semicircular ceilings, upholstered in lead, offices of superiors, tables of ordinary employees, a conference room. All rooms are decorated very simply, without frills. At one of the walls, you can hear the subway trains passing by - yes, the usual Moscow metro, which was also supposed to serve as a shelter in case of war.
The Izmailovsky bunker is more luxurious. It was intended for Stalin himself and for the top leadership of the country. Its area is huge - 93 thousand square meters. m, troops could hide underground and, according to some, even tanks.
Part of this bunker serves as a museum. The round meeting room has excellent acoustics: a person standing in the center of the hall can speak in a whisper, and the sound will be carried throughout the room. It is said that empty earthenware vessels were built into the ceiling to achieve this effect. This was done because the aging Stalin was physically unable to speak loudly. In his office there is a massive desk covered with green cloth, an armchair, and a bookcase. In other rooms - showcases with exhibits of the forties.
Another part of the bunker, under the former Cherkizovsky market, is abandoned. Not so long ago, a scandal broke out: it turned out that the old bomb shelter was turned into an illegal cheap hotel, or rather, into a brothel. Soon the Cherkizovsky market was destroyed.
Legends say that a tunnel led from the Izmailovsky bunker towards the Kremlin, which was last used during the storming of the White House and was blown up at the same time.
Another bunker, smaller and not so deep, is at the All-Russian Exhibition Center. It is located right in the building of the House of Peoples' Friendship. They say that this building was also created for Stalin, but, according to archival information, no one used the bunker. It seems that an underground passage leads from the bunker, which ends under the sculpture of Lenin in front of the pavilion. That is why the sculpture has not yet been removed.
The capacity of the bunker is 300 people. There are lounges, a large pantry, an air filtration room, and an office for the General Secretary. The equipment allowed people to stay underground for two days. Until 1971, provisions and water were regularly replenished in the bunker.
This "museum" is under the protection of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and it takes 6 hours to bring it to a state of readiness.
The Supreme Commander-in-Chief had one more bunker, equipped in 1942 under the "Near Dacha" in Kuntsevo at a depth of 15-17 meters. Journalists were allowed in there several times, despite the fact that the bunker is still secret. The underground premises are in excellent condition, they are reliable and comfortable. An ordinary inconspicuous door leads there, which can be found in any entrance. A spacious office has been preserved, trimmed with oak and Karelian birch, in which Joseph Stalin held meetings of the Defense Council. Nearby is his bedroom - a very small room, where there is only a bed and a bedside table. Also underground was its own kitchen, dining room and even a small diesel power plant. According to rumors, one of the Metro-2 lines leads to this bunker.
There are also myths about other underground bunkers: in the Kremlin itself and on the Lubyanka. The most mysterious and "promoted" of them is the Sovetskaya metro station, located under Tverskaya Square. No one has been able to go there, journalists are not allowed there, but nevertheless, no one denies its existence. It is believed that its official name is "object of civil defense on Tverskaya Square."
They say that the same "object of civil defense" is under the station "Chistye Prudy" (formerly "Kirovskaya"), where the General Staff was located during the war years. They prove the existence of a whole underground city under the Ramenskoye district, designed for thousands of people. Allegedly, there is a direct branch of the secret metro from the station "Biblioteka im. Lenin”, and in the event of an atomic war, the intellectual elite of the country had to descend from the library halls to the secret station and go to the bomb shelter.
Even in Moscow there is one underground museum, completely devoid of an ominous veil. It is located on Lesnaya Street under the sign "Wholesale trade in Kalandadze Caucasian fruits." The official name of the museum is "The Underground Printing House 1905–1906". In this apartment building, more than a hundred years ago, there was a secret revolutionary printing house, and the store served as a front. This museum is quite small - two rooms, a kitchen and a basement, but quite interesting. The interiors of the premises have been completely restored and well illustrate the living conditions and life of poor Muscovites, and they lived, it must be admitted, modestly and crampedly, according to modern concepts - they huddled.
Under the warehouse of the store in the basement of the house, a well was dug to drain groundwater, and another small cave was dug in its side wall, where an American portable printing press stood. The store was opened in the name of Mirian Kalandadze, a port loader from Batumi, who had experience in trade and a “clean” reputation. In fact, no business was conducted, the store was unprofitable: fruits were brought from the Caucasus irregularly, so if the police decided to look into Kalandadze's trading affairs, everything would quickly come out. However, the underground printing house acted very successfully - the police never managed to find it, despite the fact that the police unit was located literally nearby, on the opposite side of the street, and there was a police post near the house itself. After working for a year, the printing house was liquidated, and the cover shop closed. The museum on this site was opened in 1924, and its organizers were the same revolutionary printers who once published a newspaper here.
MOSCOW REGION
Underground defensive passages and "hiding places" - each of the fortified cities surrounding Moscow had underground secret passages to water sources: Yaroslavl, Rostov the Great, Suzdal, Tver, Kaluga, Rzhev, Mozhaisk, Vereya, Volokolamsk, Przemysl, Tarusa, Kashira, Aleksin; Joseph-Volokolamsky, Nikolo-Berlyukovsky and Simonov monasteries in the Moscow region.
The Chernigov Skete is located three kilometers northeast of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, in Sergiev Posad, on the northern shore of the eastern bay of the upper Korbushin pond. Opposite, on the south coast, are the buildings of the former Gethsemane skete, which has survived much worse.
In the past, in official documents, the Chernigov Skete was called the "Cave Department of the Gethsemane Skete." The legend refers to its beginning in 1847, when the holy fool Filippushka, accepted by Metropolitan Philaret to live in the Lavra, began to dig caves there. In fact, two years earlier, wooden cells had been built in a grove on the northern shore of the bay, in one of which Filippushka probably settled.
The description of the Gethsemane skete for 1899 says: “... Philip and his employees began to dig a small square pit, which he later began to expand, make underground corridors from it and separate small caves for cells in them; the middle large one was intended as a meeting place for the cave-dwellers for a common prayer.” From 1849 to 1851, excavators, carpenters, and masons, armed with laurel, were already working in the caves, turning the middle cave into a comfortable chapel, which was a log house buried in the ground, with windows cut through in its upper part protruding from the ground. The underground passages that branched off in different directions were turned into vaulted underground corridors lined with bricks with the same vaulted small caves on the sides. In the autumn of 1851, the cave chapel was consecrated as a temple in the name of the Incorporeal Forces.
By the end of the 19th century, these caves were significantly expanded, and ground churches were built above them, first wooden, and at the end of the 19th century - stone. The skete has turned into a rather extensive complex in the Old Russian style. At the same time, the former middle cave of Filippushki turned into an altar, to which a vast underground refectory with a vaulted ceiling was attached from the west. The southern part was returned to the monastery, in the northern part there is a boarding school for disabled children. There are guided tours in the Cave Church.
During the recent restoration in the New Jerusalem Monastery, three underground passages were discovered, which, unfortunately, had already collapsed. They diverge from the monastery in different directions and at different distances. Due to the risk of collapses and mountains of debris inside, it was not possible to explore them to the end. The moves are low, clearly intended for emergencies and not for everyday life. Only their entrances are available for inspection.
Russian landowners sometimes acquired underground passages in their estates. Usually these passages were laid at a shallow depth and collapsed long ago or were deliberately filled up.
The Sviblovo estate on the Yauza changed many owners: from Fyodor Shvibla, governor Dmitry Donskoy, to the merchant Ivan Kozhevnikov, who built a cloth factory on the other side of the river. However, he was not the first industrialist here: a hundred years before that, an associate of Peter I, Kirill Naryshkin, built a brick house, a church, a malt factory and a kitchen here. It is difficult to say which of the owners built the underground passage from the estate to the very bank of the Yauza, especially since not so long ago it was filled up during the renovation of the estate.
The existence of a passage to Sviblovo is documented, but in many cases we are forced to be content with only rumors.
In the village of Avdotino, Stupino District, some buildings of an old estate have been preserved, which in the 18th century belonged to the famous educator-mason Nikolai Novikov. He created the first private printing house in Russia and, with his bold satires, aroused the wrath of Empress Catherine II. The Empress can be understood: she was frightened by the terrible events of the French Revolution. By her order, Novikov was arrested and taken to the Shlisselburg fortress without trial. Pavel I granted him freedom, but Novikov, who lost his health and fortune, did not live long.
Traditions have been preserved about the secret passages and underground halls dug by him in Avdotino for Masonic meetings. One of the passages allegedly led to the neighboring Trinity-Lobanovo, which belonged to the Volkonskys. They searched for these passages for a long time, but never found them.
Many legends about underground passages are also connected with the preserved estate in the village of Voronovo, standing on the old Kaluga road. It is believed that the first passage was dug from the main manor house to the stone church built in 1709. At the end of the 18th century, General Artemy Vorontsov built a luxurious palace with a horse yard in the estate and laid out a park with picturesque stone pavilions. A new tunnel was cut from the palace to the horse yard, through which a horse could pass, and secret galleries were led to gazebos and other buildings.
But in 1812, all this was burned down: the next owner, the Moscow governor-general Rostopchin, set fire to his house himself so that Napoleon would not get it. Several eyewitnesses testify to this, and even the Napoleonic general noted in his diary that he found only ashes in Voronovo and a note pinned to the gate: “I set fire to my palace, which cost me a million ...”
However, the act of the count aroused not admiration, but horror among his compatriots: too many valuables were destroyed by him in vain. In addition, the owners of estates who suffered from Napoleon could claim some compensation from the Russian government, and Rostopchin, who burned down his palace himself, clearly did not fall into this category. Then the general began to deny it and claim that it was not he himself who burned down his house, but the enemy. But they did not believe him, and besides, rumors spread that the count did not suffer as much as he was trying to prove, and that he prudently demolished his treasures in the dungeon and hid there until better times. The count denied the accusations and defiantly did not return to Voronovo.
A hundred years later, history repeated itself: the last owner of Voronov, Countess Sheremeteva, frightened by the events of the February Revolution, left the estate without luggage. But the Bolsheviks did not find especially valuable things in the estate either. Where did they go?
During excavations on the territory of the estate, researchers discovered several wide tunnels blocked by rubble. Some valuable items, mostly metal, were also found in these underground passages. Hopes that the paintings would someday be found have long since evaporated: the canvases would not have survived two hundred years in the underground dampness.
120 kilometers from Moscow, in the city of Alexandrov, there was a country palace of Ivan the Terrible. Here tourists will be told about the manners and customs of the king. About how he married eight times, and unloved wives sent to monasteries or killed. How he fed the fish in the pond with the corpses of his enemies, and how fat and tasty the fish served at the royal table was. They will show the underground casemates, where the unfortunate prisoners were tortured, and other, more peaceful, but also underground rooms, where food supplies were stored. Suffering from persecution mania, Grozny loved dungeons, and even the royal bedchambers were built underground for the sake of safety. Tourists are shown these rooms: carved beds, carpets, embroidered bedspreads and no windows.
On the banks of the Pakhra River there is an extensive system of caves, both natural and artificial. Usually, Nikitsky quarries and a large group of Novlensky caves are distinguished, among which are called the Syanovsky quarries, Kiseli, Novo-Syanovsky, Pioneer and others. The length of the underground labyrinth is very large, and it is believed that some of the caves were dug in the times of Ancient Russia for the extraction of limestone.
On weekends, Syany is visited by dozens and even hundreds of people. The entrance to the dungeon is called the Cat's Eye. The passages and halls of the quarries have also been given original names: Mlechnik, Pike, Venus hole - a woman with a good figure fits perfectly into it.
At the entrance to the quarry there is a notebook - a journal of visits, where you definitely need to check in, going down, and then a second time, leaving the caves. Under the ground it is strictly forbidden to litter and even more so to kindle fires. Flashlights should be directed downwards, and not in the face of oncoming people.
The Nikitsky quarries are another huge cave system discovered in the mid-fifties. Currently, part of the caves is equipped for excursions. There are many halls and passages with enticing names in the system: Wet Galleries, Ezhovaya, Chicken and Dokhlomyshina; Commander's Hall, Lake of the Drunken Drummer, Chagall's well... Some caves are considered an anomalous zone.
ST. PETERSBURG
Despite the fact that St. Petersburg is a city in a swamp, its oldest underground passage is almost the same age as the city itself. It was dug in the Sovereign's bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress at the beginning of the 18th century during the restructuring of the original wood-and-earth fortress into a stone one and is located in the thickness of the sloping outer wall for the safe movement of the fortress garrison from the left flank of the bastion to the right.
It is a tunnel 97 meters long and about two wide. The brick walls and vaults were not painted or plastered. 25 embrasures were made in the outer wall; in the 19th century, they were laid during the repair of the wall.
The fortress was never used for defense purposes, so the underground passage served as a warehouse, and then it was completely covered up, discovered only in the fifties of the XX century when laying a heating main.
The restoration of the postern and the casemate with which it is connected was a gift from the Kingdom of the Netherlands for the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg. Now the underground passage is open to the public.
Another passage was arranged in the Trubetskoy bastion of the Peter and Paul Fortress, but it was also covered up and has not yet been dug up.
There are other historical dungeons in St. Petersburg. Under Labor Square (Blagoveshchenskaya Square) there is an underground part of the Kryukov Canal, hidden in a sewer back in the early 1840s. This underground tunnel with granite walls and brick vaults was considered one of the most sinister St. Petersburg slums and was described in the novel of the same name by Vsevolod Krestovsky: bandits took refuge and hid the loot there. The authorities took action, and in the 1870s, the entrance to the canal from the Neva side was closed with bars and filled up.
However, in the spring of 1912, the soil began to subside on the square, and then a huge pit formed altogether - this was the collapse of the arches of the Kryukov Canal. After dismantling the already rusted grate, the engineers sailed on a raft through stinking underground waters and found that the structure was completely dilapidated. Then the canal was filled up completely and forgotten about it. Only in the 1990s, when an underground passage was being built on Truda Square, the builders stumbled upon the remains of a stone vault. The unique relic was preserved and made part of the design of the modern crossing.
This concludes the list of explored and explored dungeons of the Northern Capital. In most underground spaces, there are only digger enthusiasts. So gloomy fame acquired Shuvalovsky Park after in 1988 two teenagers fell into a dungeon under Mount Parnassus, and only one of them managed to be saved. According to the diggers, there is an extensive dungeon system under the park. Whether these are the secret passages of the former owner of these places, the freemason Count Shuvalov, or the fortifications of the times of the First and Second World Wars, it is difficult to say: after the tragic incident, they did not examine them, but simply filled up the entrances with soil.
They say that under the Alexander Nevsky Lavra there is a whole labyrinth of small rooms connected by narrow passages. Probably, initially they served as a monastic prison, and later they were abandoned. Now they are partially flooded by the waters of the Monastyrka River, and the entrances to them are walled up for safety. Diggers nevertheless penetrated into the dungeon of the Lavra through one of the crypts at the Nikolsky cemetery and found weapons and grenades from the Civil War.
The Mikhailovsky Castle was built in less than three years on the site of the Summer Palace of Elizabeth Petrovna on the special order of Paul I. For forty days, the castle was considered the residence of the emperor. Pavel was very concerned about his safety, so he wanted the castle to be surrounded by water on all sides. For this, artificial channels were specially dug, and drawbridges were thrown over them. According to legend, in case of a sudden flight from the castle, several underground passages were dug, which the emperor could use in case of danger. But he did not have time to do this, but on the contrary: according to one version, it was through the underground passage that the conspirators who killed Pavel entered the Mikhailovsky Castle.
In the neighboring Summer Garden, there also seems to be underground passages dug by order of Peter I. For a long time it was believed that they were destroyed long ago, however, during the restoration of the Summer Garden after the flood of 1924, an entrance to a deep dungeon was found near the Coffee House, from which there was a high and rather wide tunnel with brick walls. He led to a small vaulted hall, from which passages went towards the Field of Mars and to the opposite side of the Fontanka River. It was not possible to pass through them: after ten meters, strong iron bars blocked the path. The tunnels were inspected, described and… filled in. Since then they have not been found.
After the outbreak of World War I, an angry mob stormed the German embassy and ransacked it. However, only the doorkeeper who did not leave his post was injured, the rest simply were not in the building: by some unknown way they managed to escape. Then information surfaced about the existence of an underground passage between the German embassy and the neighboring Astoria hotel, because both buildings were built by the same company. Nicholas II solved the problem wisely, ordering the confiscation of the hotel and the adjacent plot in favor of the treasury.
They say that there is an old bunker near Smolny that can even withstand an atomic bombing. During World War II, he served as a command post. During the war, a bunker was also built under the park of the Forestry Academy, and now it is flooded, just like most of all bomb shelters during the war.
Enthusiast-researchers claim that there are underground passages in almost all central districts of St. Petersburg. Entrances to the catacombs were seen in the 30s on the street. Architect Rossi, on the square. Ostrovsky, on the Fontanka embankment. It is possible that in the area of Sennaya Square there are several tiers of underground structures. These connecting and intersecting basements stretch from Nevsky Prospekt to Lermontovsky. According to rumors, there is an underground passage in one of the houses on the Fontanka, which once belonged to Platon Zubov. This house is famous for its "rotunda" - an entrance with six columns and a spiral staircase. Legends say that there are underground passages and hiding places under the Menshikov Palace, it is believed that the disgraced favorite hid his untold wealth there.
Litovsky Avenue has long been a cluster of thieves' raspberries and dens. A whole complex of underground structures has developed there: cellars, cellars, underground taverns and brothels connected by secret passages. Unfortunately, these places are mostly explored by diggers, not scientists. There are many interesting finds - gramophones, porcelain figurines, thieves' tools ... Some hope to find the legendary treasures of Lenka Panteleev there.
There is a legend that the FSB building on Liteiny Prospekt has multi-storey basements with terrible torture chambers, boxes for medical experiments, and even a brothel for employees. But this is unlikely: the Neva is too close.
The atmosphere of these semi-mythical and unexplored dungeons is recreated by the Horrors of Petersburg Museum, which is actually located on the surface. But another museum - "The World of Water of St. Petersburg" - is partially underground. He talks about the history of the water supply and sewerage of St. Petersburg and causes delight in children and great interest in adults.
SURROUNDINGS OF SAINT PETERSBURG
Catherine II built the Gatchina Palace as a gift to her favorite Grigory Orlov, but then their relationship changed, and Orlov was forbidden to approach St. Petersburg, and Catherine bought Gatchina and gave it to her son, the future Emperor Paul I. Tradition associates the creation of the Gatchina underground passage palace, although the documents say otherwise: the underground passage was built simultaneously with the palace itself.
There is a version that it was this underground passage that Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky used, running away from the sailors in 1917.
He really mentioned in his memoirs that an employee of the palace came to him and indicated that he knew a secret, unknown underground passage that went into the park outside the walls of this palace-fortress. But judging by his further words, he himself hastily fled in some other way, and several of his people came out through the underground passage.
You can go down into the underground passage 130 meters long directly from the main halls on the second floor. In the wall of the front bedchamber there is a secret door to a dark narrow spiral staircase leading to the lower floor to the emperor's dressing room, and then to the palace cellars.
This passage was not secret, on the contrary, the passage and cellars of the palace were used to amuse the guests. Thanks to good acoustics, the echo here repeats up to four syllables, and visitors to the Gatchina Palace were entertained with special "chants". Because of this, the exit from the tunnel to the shore of the Silver Lake was called Echo Grotto. The most famous of the old "chants" - "What flower is not afraid of frost?! - Rose! ”,“ What was the name of the first maiden ?! - Eva!”, “Who stole the clamps?! - You!". The guides say that once upon a time, horse harness was hung along the walls of the tunnel, and then for some reason it was removed. For some reason, the little Grand Duchess ran there and, seeing the empty space on the walls, exclaimed in bewilderment: “Who stole the clamps?” "You! .. You! .. You! .." echoed.
A popular question among tourists is: “Who ruled us?! - Paul!" They say that the name of the ill-fated emperor echoes up to 30 times!
However, you should not abuse the patience of the underground echo - you can inadvertently wake up the ghost of Paul I himself. Thus, in the memoirs of the daughter of the chief custodian of the palace, a case is described when in the mid-twenties, walking with a friend, she wandered into the grotto and loudly shouted the name Paul. In response, from the darkness came: "He died!" The girls ran in horror, it never occurred to them that someone could play a trick on them.
According to unverified information, there is another underground passage that connected the Gatchina Palace with the Priory Palace. During the strengthening of the foundation of the palace, the restorers really stumbled upon an underground passage leading towards the reservoirs, but they were able to walk through it only about a hundred meters.
On the Oredezh River, near the village of Rozhdestveno, Gatchina Region, not far from the Siversky Canyon, there is a Holy Cave and a Holy Spring. The terrain there is very beautiful: steep banks, hills, huge boulders, clear springs, beautiful forests, flowering meadows ... Fossils of the Paleozoic era are often found in these places. The cave, nicknamed the Saint, apparently served as a place of worship since ancient times. In the 15th century, a temple stood over it. It has long disappeared, but until now, underground waters sometimes bring crosses, chains, and coins to the surface. Many legends are associated with this cave: they say that a whole network of underground tunnels radiates from it. Many notice a strange glow or human figures in it. Such caves in the Leningrad region are not uncommon. In the Slantsy district, near the village of Zaruchie, on the banks of the Dolgaya River, at the foot of the mountain, there is a Monashka cave. Once a church was erected over the cave, but it was blown up. The cave itself is half-filled and you can only go through it for fifteen meters.
But the dungeons of Peterhof are not at all mysterious, although very interesting. There is an excursion "Secrets of Peterhof Fountains" - tourists are led through dark, sinister-looking underground aqueducts, where the intricate mechanics of the famous fountains and their unique gravity-flowing plumbing system are located. Tourists are shown working adits under the grottoes of the Grand Cascade, chambers under the fountains "Favorite" and "Basket", turn on the "Water Road" for them. And visitors are allowed to turn on and off the cracker fountain "Sofa" by pouring water on those walking upstairs. Special sliders regulate the height of the fountain jets.
There is also a legendary unexplored dungeon in Peterhof - this is an underground passage under Olgin's pond. They say that one of its exits is on the island where there is a cottage for friends of Nicholas I, and the other is in the cellars of the Great Peterhof Cathedral.
Sablino is located 40 kilometers from St. Petersburg, in the vicinity of which there are a lot of attractions: two waterfalls, ancient mounds, the site of Alexander Nevsky before the battle with the Swedes, the former estate of Count A.K. Tolstoy, as well as more than ten caves. The largest of them - "Levoberezhnaya" - is open only to organized groups of visitors: the total length of its moves is five and a half kilometers, and a "wild" tourist can easily get lost. The entrance to it is located near the bridge over the river Tosna. The cave has three underground lakes, quite deep and vast, several large beautiful halls with unusual names - Two-Eyed, Cosmic, Columned, Jubilee, Little Red Riding Hood and others. The walls of the caves are made of white and red sandstone, and the vaults are partly made of greenish limestone. Stalactites hang from the ceiling, and the floor is covered with spherical formations - "cave pearls". Those who want to tickle their nerves can squeeze through the Cat's hole. You can do this only lying down, pressing your hands to the body. Even in summer, you need to dress warmly for this excursion: it is always +8 degrees in the cave.
Hundreds of bats winter in the Sablinsky caves. This is the largest population in the region. It is impossible to touch them or even illuminate them with bright light, since a mouse awakened in winter dies of hunger.
In 2005, on the day of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, a chapel was consecrated in the Left Bank Cave. It serves to perpetuate the memory of the lost travelers - geographers, geologists, polar explorers, speleologists, climbers who gave their lives in the service of science.
The Taitsky water conduit is a gravity water supply system of Tsarskoye Selo, built in 1773–1787 under the direction of the military engineer Baur, the same one who built the first Mytishchi water supply system in Moscow.
The Taitsky water conduit consisted of open (about five kilometers) and underground (slightly less than four kilometers) canals with storage ponds and grottoes. Water came from the Hannibal or Soninsky springs. Initially, it was wooden, and twenty years later it was rebuilt in stone. This water supply system supplied water to the entire population of Tsarskoye Selo, Sofia and Pavlovsk, the palace itself and all park fountains until 1905, when the new Orlovsky water supply was launched. By that time, the condition of the conduit was already critical, and soon it completely failed. At present, only fragments of it can be seen.
In the city of Vsevolozhsk, at the fork in the road to Lake Ladoga and Koltushi, Rumbolovskaya Mountain rises. In front of it, a monument-stele was erected, decorated with oak and laurel leaves: the “Road of Life” began from Rumbolovskaya Mountain.
Fans of underground travel assure that the entire Rumbolovskaya mountain is pitted with passages created in time immemorial. They lead quite far, connecting with the Koltushsky quarries, located a good ten kilometers from Vsevolozhsk. Their center is a deep and wide well in the so-called Red Castle on top of a mountain - a medieval building that became the basis for the Vsevolozhsky estate. The manor burned down a long time ago, and the ancient walls are still standing. According to local legends, the Red Castle with extensive cellars was built by order of the outstanding Swedish commander Pontus Delagardie, who participated in the Livonian War.
The Demidovs' estate is located in the village of Nikolskoye, Gatchina District, on the banks of the Sivorka River. At the beginning of the 20th century, the estate was bought by the St. Petersburg Zemstvo for the construction of a neuropsychiatric hospital in it. The founder of the hospital was the outstanding psychiatrist Petr Petrovich Kashchenko. The hospital operates in the estate and now. During a recent renovation, a network of underground passages between the outbuildings of the estate was discovered. They were laid at a shallow depth and therefore fell into complete disrepair.
Vyborg is located 130 kilometers northwest of St. Petersburg. Vyborg Castle was founded by the Swedes in 1293. In the 13th century, its watchtower was considered the highest donjon in Scandinavia at that time. The thickness of the fortress walls was one and a half to two meters, and the thickness of the walls of the tower was four meters. Novgorodians have repeatedly attempted to take the castle by storm, but unsuccessfully.
In the 15th century, the governor of the Swedish king spent a lot of time and effort decorating the fortress so that it would become his pride. In the middle of the next century, the famous Queen Christina and King Gustav Vasa visited here. In those days, the Vyborg Castle was considered impregnable and majestic. He served the Swedes for another fifteen years, and in 1710, after a long siege, he finally surrendered to the Russians. From the second half of the 18th century, the castle began to be used as a prison and premises for the garrison. Here, in particular, some Decembrists were kept. At the end of the 19th century, the castle was repaired and significantly reconstructed, retaining only the outer medieval facade. In this form, the castle has survived to this day.
The castle has an underground passage to the river, built in the early 1560s - the Matveeva Pit. At the beginning of the 20th century, attempts were made to explore it, but in the thirties they walled it up. Part of it is used for the pipeline.
Ivangorod and the fortress of the same name are located 147 kilometers from St. Petersburg. In 1492, at the bend of the River Narva on a hill opposite the Livonian castle, Ivan III ordered a small fortress to be built to protect against the Livonians and the Swedes, but only four years later it was captured by the Swedes. Having beaten off the fortress, the Russians repaired it, expanded it, and by the beginning of the 16th century Ivangorod had already become a powerful fortification. On the contrary, on the other side of the Narva River, the Livonians built their fortress - Narva, or otherwise Herman's Castle (in this case, Herman is not a person, but the highest tower of the fortress).
Ivangorod took part in hostilities many times, passed from hand to hand, it was blown up, then rebuilt again. And now, as in ancient times, the border with Estonia runs along the Narva River, and the border regime operates in the fortress. Opposite Ivangorodskaya still rises Herman's Castle.
Azure-fire from the underground Nature often preserves amazing echoes of the past for us. For centuries, and sometimes for millennia, it keeps traces of an ancient person, until his descendants deliberately or accidentally find them and read about their deeds from them.
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