Underground Moscow keeps many secrets. At a depth of many meters, there is a real ancient city, hidden from prying eyes. Today its inhabitants are the ones who know how to get there. Where was the potash stored in the capital, who discovered the treasure of 13 poods, and what were the car thieves doing in the salt barns?
A river chained in stone has no banks, and the current is so powerful that you have to calculate every step and in no case keep up with the guide. Life in underground Moscow is in full swing!
The further downstream, the harder it is to breathe due to humidity. Even the most seemingly calm areas are dangerous. The stream, having slowed down for a while, suddenly collapses with renewed vigor, rushes desperately, knocks down, and from the vapors of methane, hydrogen and carbon dioxide, those who risked descending into the underground often lose their heads. And still they go - this man-made uninhabited world is full of the most unexpected discoveries.
“If water drips onto a flat surface and is not washed away by a stronger stream from above, a stalagmite will form. It is usually larger in diameter. Within 10 years, the stalactite and stalagmite can grow together, and a column is formed - a stalagnat. This is a very rare occurrence for the Moscow subway,”says a Moscow expert, digger Daniil Davydov.
Overhead - almost 10 meters of ground, in front of impenetrable darkness and, it seems, no hope of light at the end of the tunnel. In the nooks and crannies of the city of water, a long history is hidden in the depths.
There are officially about 200 secret rivers in the capital. The entrances that lead to underground Moscow are hidden throughout the city.
One of the arteries of the energy system of Moscow is a five-story building as high as it was built vertically downward; only specialists are allowed here. The entrance to uninvited guests is also closed to the underground on Solyanka. On a gentle descent 10 meters down and deep for 5 centuries. Once upon a time there were barns where salt was stored. Later, a shelter for the homeless was opened on the site of the warehouse.
“You go down the alley into a wiggling rotten pit. In the fog, crowds of ragamuffins move - beggars, thieves, freed serfs, fugitive convicts from Siberia. He will find his own way, but a stranger has no need to meddle in here,”wrote Gilyarovsky about these places, and Stanislavsky, together with Nemirovich-Danchenko and the actors of the play“At the Bottom”, already in the XX century went to the basements for inspiration, so that everything on stage would be like in life.
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“Any old system has its own life. From time to time, failures of old systems occur, and new rooms open up - both below and somewhere outside the walls, because these ancient structures were built on the site of even more ancient ones, and now they were being built up more recent. Every time we discover some secrets of these systems,”says guide and digger Roman Goncharov.
Rusty wires twine around the columns and vaults. The halls are divided into small cubicles by thin brick partitions. Due to constant leaks of worn-out pipes, the rooms are flooded in places, carcasses rot in puddles - in the Soviet years one of the premises was used as a garage for the transport of Interior Ministry employees. The entrance to the underground garage has been laid today, everywhere there are mountains of broken bricks, which could well be mistaken for construction waste, if not for marks: on every thousandth brick the plant put a special stamp, one presumably of the 19th century.
After unknown persons started a fire in the basements of Solyanka, the patience of the local DEZ was overflowed - the entrances were closed. Locks appeared on the doors, sensors and cameras were installed, even the skylights on the ceiling were laid with asphalt.
“Right in the sidewalks on the street there were huge cast-iron gratings, there were pieces of glass in them and you could see the sky and people walking along the street, it was light here during the day,” says Roman Goncharov.
Stairways hanging in the air and tunnel forks leading to nowhere are just a part of the capital's underworld. And if you know the secret passage, it is quite possible to walk in the center of Moscow without rising to the surface.