What can be in common between the Tsar Bell, the Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bath? They are united by the fact that none of the named artifacts were ever used for their intended purpose: the bell never rang, the cannon never fired, and apparently no one washed in the bathtub.
On the other hand, there is also a difference between them. If the bell and the cannon are the exhibits of the Moscow Kremlin and are known all over the world, then very few people know about the Tsar Bath. And all because it is located in Tsarskoye Selo, in ruins on the outskirts of Babolovsky Park, which is located a little away from tourist routes.
The Babolovskaya bowl is a real masterpiece of stone-cutting art, but scientists still cannot establish when and who made it. Anyway, a lot of questions have accumulated around the bowl, which no one can answer yet.
It is now reliably known that a huge round granite bath was originally installed, and only then walls and a domed vault were erected around it. But in order to deal with all the riddles, you need to talk about everything in order.
It should be noted that guests of Tsarskoye Selo do not often indulge Babolovsky Park with their attention. There are not many architectural attractions here, the park itself is rather neglected and looks more like a forest. On the other hand, it is very quiet, calm and fresh air here. And if you walk almost to the end along Babolovskaya Prosek (this is the main alley of the park), and then turn to the right, you can find yourself in front of a large pond, which was formed at the place where the Kuzminka River was blocked by a dam bridge.
On the opposite bank you can see ruins made of red brick - this is what survived from the Babolovsky Palace, which was destroyed during the bombing during the Great Patriotic War by German troops. Unfortunately, until now, the castle has not been restored, although the ruins were surrounded by a fence and even hung a sign on which it was said that the castle was being restored. There is not only a guard here, but also dogs.
However, with a strong desire, it is quite possible to come to an agreement with him and look into the octagonal tower through a gap in the wall. And that's where the real miracle lies - a gigantic perfectly round bowl, carved from a single piece of granite. According to the official history, it was cut out by the masters of the Petersburg artel Samson Sukhanov at the behest of Emperor Alexander I.
The same official story says that the masons carried out the royal decree for seven years - in 1811-1818. On one of the Finnish islands, a 160-ton dark pink granite block was found. Now it is not yet known where the bath was carved out of this block - near the installation site or directly in the quarry. In the end, the result is a bowl that has no analogues in the whole world. It reaches 5.3 meters in diameter, almost 2 meters in height, the depth of the bowl is just over 1.5 meters, and the weight is 48 tons. It fit 800 buckets of water.
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We can say that the stonemasons have done a truly hellish job. So, just in order to give a granite block a cup-shaped shape, it was necessary to hit the scarpel with a mallet tens of billions of times. Approximately the same number of times you need to hit in order for perfectly round steel and the outer walls of the bowl. And if we take into account that at that time the carbide stone-cutting tool had not yet been invented, and the ordinary steel tools used by the craftsmen had to be sharpened after several blows on the granite, it is simply amazing how, in such extremely difficult conditions, the craftsmen managed to give the bowl an ideal geometric shape …
Contemporaries admired this unique item. They wrote enthusiastic notes about her. So, in particular, in 1818 Pavel Svinin wrote in the "Notes of the Fatherland" that Sukhanov had finished work on the beautiful, unique bathroom for the Babolovskaya bath. This creation, he said, deserves attention, since since the time of the ancient Egyptians, no one has yet managed to create something so huge from a single piece of granite.
To install the bath, it was necessary to rebuild the palace, which, in fact, was done in 1824-1829. The author of the project was Vasily Petrovich Stasov. Initially, a bowl was installed, and then the walls of the pavilion and a stone dome were erected around it.
However, there are many mysteries hidden in this magnificent bowl. According to historians, it was used for bathing representatives of the royal family in the hot summer period, since the royal persons appear in an inappropriate form in front of the common public. But in this case, a completely logical question arises: how was this bathtub filled with water, after all, we recall, 800 buckets of water were placed in it. Was it really worn by hand as soon as someone wanted to swim?
Similarly, it is completely incomprehensible how the water from the bath was drained, since there is no drain hole in the bowl.
And besides, Babolovsky Palace cannot be called a palace. This is just a house, which consisted of dozens of rooms, or, to be more precise, seven (counting the bathing part for one room). At the same time, this is also not a bathhouse, but rather a place where you can retire, arrange a romantic date, calmly rest after hunting, noisy court amusements and balls. Thus, some experts quite logically assumed that no one has ever steamed in the bath, and never bathed in the bath.
The method of delivering the granite block to the location of the Babolovsky Palace also raises big questions. Many are well aware of the enormous effort it took to deliver the famous Thunder Stone for the pedestal of the monument to Peter I.
But if he was transported on a barge along the Neva, and then dragged only a hundred meters, then with a granite block for Tsar Bath, the situation was completely different. The 160-ton block had to be dragged several tens of miles across rough terrain in the absence of electricity and steam.
But even if we assume that the bowl was hewn directly in the quarry, as a result of which its weight became four times less, its transportation looks extremely problematic, if not impossible.
It should also be noted that during the Great Patriotic War, German soldiers, who, having much greater technical capabilities, intended to take the artifact to Germany, but were eventually forced to abandon their idea, since they did not have suitable vehicles and the necessary equipment.
Some experts have repeatedly expressed doubts that the Babolovskaya bowl was hewn by hand, since, in their opinion, machining is clearly visible, an exact circle around the entire diameter, an exact spherical surface of the bottom of the bowl. Such a perfect product is simply impossible to make by hand or, moreover, to polish. Looking at the bath, one gets the impression that it has just come out from under the machine. In addition, such a high-quality polish is simply impossible to achieve without high-speed polishing and grinding machines.
But in the event that this is really so, and the bowl is made using machine processing, then another logical question arises: where could the craftsmen get a lathe of such huge dimensions.
Thus, the only thing that remains to be assumed is that this artifact is much older than scientists had previously assumed, and that it got to mankind from a much more ancient civilization, which in ancient times inhabited our planet, and then somehow reasons disappeared from the face of the Earth.
Some scientists compare this artifact in grandeur with the sarcophagus in the pyramid of Cheops, which is about five thousand years old, although, most likely, much more. By the way, archaeologists have established that this granite box was not intended for the burial of the pharaoh, but what functions it actually performed remains unknown.
The situation is approximately the same with the Babolovskaya bowl. Currently, there are many versions of its purpose. So, according to one of the versions, this bowl has been lying in the surrounding swamps since ancient times, and that it was accidentally discovered at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Others are sure that the bowl is an element of an antenna transducer-converter of microwave oscillations for ultra-long distance space communication.
Be that as it may, one thing remains undeniable: this artifact is a real masterpiece of stone-cutting technique. Even with the current level of technology development and using modern machine tools, it is very, very difficult to create something like this.
There are many doubts associated with the Tsar Bath. So, for example, if the masters of the century before last knew how to do such things, then why was this skill lost over time? And why is such a masterpiece hidden from human eyes for many years and is practically in a landfill? None of these questions have been answered yet …