Any capital of a European state can boast of dozens of truly gloomy places around which frightening legends have formed over the course of several centuries. There is nothing to be surprised at: the plague, the Inquisition, constant wars of city-states, executions and popular uprisings - the Middle Ages were a serious test for European countries.
We had neither the Inquisition nor the plague, but Moscow is nevertheless capable of giving any other city in the world a hundred points ahead in terms of gloom. Buildings in the center of the Russian capital do not look intimidating or even alarming at all. Meanwhile, pastoral colors and often naive architecture hide such secrets that you don't want to touch at all.
House on the Embankment
During the Soviet Union, the house was called the "House of Government", abbreviated as DOPR. Muscovites, however, preferred to read the abbreviation differently, "house of preliminary detention." And this was quite true: for high-ranking residents, citizens from the NKVD often came directly to their apartments - in total, exactly half of the guests disappeared in the camps. And why be surprised, the house was built literally on tombstones expropriated by fearless Soviet commissars from the church graveyard at the Church of Nicholas the Wonderworker on Bersenevka.
Lubyanka
Promotional video:
Perhaps the darkest and bloodiest building in the capital. The phrase "cellars of the Lubyanka" even became a winged one, although no special atrocities were ever committed in the cellars: everything took place in a special six-story prison in the courtyard of the Lubyanka. The valiant Chekists thoroughly washed all the cracks of their beloved refuge with the blood of prisoners, torture was applied here to all potential enemies of the people. But no executions were carried out in the Lubyanka - after interrogation, the unfortunates were taken to be executed in other places.
Dzerzhinsky's mansion
At the corner of Bolshaya Lubyanka and Varsonofyevsky Lane, a mansion in bright colors rises, not at all like a place where something bad is happening. Meanwhile, this mansion at one time became the first headquarters of Soviet nkvdshnikov, who gathered here for meetings led by the unforgettable guardian of communism Dzerzhinsky. In the courtyard of the building there is a special vehicle base, its garages painted in pink and now any passer-by from the street can observe. Under these very garages, in basements isolated by metal walls, from 1918 to 1948, the Chekists shot 15 thousand people.
Nikolskaya, 23
At this address is the former "execution house", as it was called by the people. On Nikolskaya, 23, the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR conducted cases. Up to a hundred convictions were handed down a day. The efficiency of the trial was the personal pride of the chairman of the commission, Vasily Ulrich. Over the years of work, more than 30 thousand people were taken away from here to be shot.
Khovrinskaya hospital
In Khovrino, on the territory under the unreliable protection of a fence broken in many places, there is a gloomy building of the unfinished Khovrinsk hospital. For more than thirty years, a huge maze, where stairs lead to nowhere, and basements can fall into the ground, is incredibly popular with adrenaline addicts of all stripes. Here satanists gathered, criminals hid and emoqids burst from the windows. According to one of the legends, a gang of Satanists who brought human sacrifices in the basements of Khovrino were burnt alive by the soldiers of the Moscow SOBR in the same basements.
It is reliably known that in total about a hundred people found their end on the territory of the failed hospital - some fell off the roof, some ran into rusty fittings, and some came here on purpose, unable to endure the heavy burden of metropolitan life.