This Moscow district is a truly tricky place in full accordance with its name. It seems that walking along the old lanes, among the estates, temples and apartment buildings is the main pleasure of these places.
View of Khitrovskaya Square from the tower of the Myasnitskaya police station. Winter 1916
Commons.wikimedia.org
However, the most interesting thing on Khitrovka is its underside, underside, as they used to say in the old days. One might even say - the underworld.
History underfoot
And this is not an exaggeration at all, considering how terrible Khitrovka was in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries - a hotbed of crime and crime, into which even the police were afraid to meddle. The real Hitrovka of previous centuries has been perfectly preserved, but not in front of our eyes, but deep underground, where to this day there is a grave silence, where unafraid mice run through underground labyrinths, where ancient treasures hidden by our ancestors 100 or 200 are still lying years ago. Looking ahead, I will say that I did not come across treasures and mice, but it is actually quiet there to such an extent that ears hurt from the complete absence of sounds …
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Khitrovskaya Square 100 years ago was a dubious and gloomy place, and today it is one of the most beautiful corners of Moscow, where it is so pleasant to walk. However, the dark dungeons under the plaza remain the same.
Photo: RIA Novosti / M. Shabelnikov; AiF / Eduard Kudryavitsky
Underground life has always been in full swing in these places. Metropolitan diggers say that Khitrovka is one of the few areas that you can go through underground without ever getting to the surface. Dungeons stretch for many kilometers, have a rather complex system of tunnels, forks and underground halls. Therefore, we strongly advise against going down there to an inexperienced person - and indeed to anyone in general - it is very easy to get lost in the dungeons, and since our ancestors built on conscience, no one will hear the screams, will not come and save …
“There are a lot of ancient dungeons in Russian cities,” says digger Vadim Mikhailov. - This "molestation" can be explained by the fact that in the old days raids were frequent, the time of troubles was cruel, there were enough robbers … Therefore, the need to hide ourselves and save your goods was very urgent. In some places near Khitrovka, we came across powerful cultural layers, in which 300-year-old mud had accumulated. But among the debris, they also found gas lanterns and curious utensils. Much of this is now kept in the Museum of Moscow."
In ancient times, salt warehouses were located in the local basements (the name of Solyanka Street is evidence of this). In troubled times, the townspeople hid in the dungeons from robbers and fires. And the subsequent unkind glory Khitrovka owes to the person whose name it is, in fact, named. General Nikolai Khitrovo, who built here in the 1820s. the market and who subsequently presented it to the city (a good thing, in general, it was), wanted the best, but it turned out … At first, they sold ceremoniously on stalls, and since the mid-1860s. Khitrov market has turned into a kind of "labor exchange" for seasonal workers. Those who did not find work (or did not want to find one) gradually descended, turning into vagabonds and bandits. And they lived right there - in the lodging houses.
Day laborers are waiting for employers at the Khitrov market. 1898 g
Photo: RIA Novosti
Strange people of the dungeon
The most famous shelters worked as "hotels" at the restaurants of the same name. For example, in the house of Rumyantsev (12 Podkolokolny Lane) there were two taverns - "Peresilny" and "Siberia". The landowner Elizaveta Yaroshenko, who happily lived in her Kaluga estate and did not show her nose to Moscow, owned a tavern with the terrible name "Hard labor" (Podkolokolny lane, 11).
And the so-called "iron house" on the spit of Pevcheskiy and Petropavlovskiy lanes was glorified by the "Kulakovka" little house - it was also called "Pig House" (in honor of the owner PP Svinin) or "Dry Ravine". Under each house there were dungeons (now they would say "minus the first floor"), where … Muscovites lived for the cheapest price? guests of the capital? Who these people were is now difficult to say.
There were taverns "Peresylny" and "Siberia"
Photo: AiF / Eduard Kudryavitsky
“I remember once walking through the underground corridor of the Sukhoi Ravine,” writes Vladimir Gilyarovsky in his bestseller “Moscow and Muscovites”, “strike a match and see - horror! - from a stone wall, from a smooth stone wall, the head of a living person crawls out. I stopped, and my head was screaming: “Put out, devil, a match! Look around! " My companion blew out a match in my hand and dragged me further, and my head still muttered something after. This is a disguised entrance to a cache underground, where not like the police - the devil himself will not climb."
The so-called "crayfish" also lived in the dungeons - the finally degraded tailors, who made their living by altering stolen clothes - dresses, fur coats and caftans. They were called "Cancers" because they never left their holes, having drunk their last pants.
There were also the so-called "moles" in the basements (V. Gilyarovsky and B. Akunin mention them), which for a pittance made up "papers" for illiterate neighbors and could hardly stand daylight. And there were also dashing people who, because of the turn of the underground passage, were able to strike a clever blow and then rob the insensible body.
KS Stanislavsky went to Khitrovka to create the scenery for the play At the Bottom. Moscow Art Theater, 1902
Photo: RIA Novosti
At the bottom
But how can you get to these mysterious places if you are not a "black digger", not a utility worker or a ghost, but an ordinary person? It turns out that this is quite possible if you go … to a theater operating in the Khitrovka area.
Its auditorium is located in those very old cellars where salt was once stored, where they sold "slam" (stolen goods) and sorted out relations with knives. Of course, now the theatrical basements have been cleaned out and put in full order, and the repertoire (surprise!) Includes the play At the Bottom. The theater staff say that salt streaks sometimes appear on the ceilings, and the history of architecture can be studied along the ancient vaulted walls.
… And when the performance ends and the audience comes out on an eerie metal staircase to the surface, terrible silence ensues in the underground hall! And then it seems that time itself, overlaid by centuries, has stopped here forever.