Many secrets have remained since the time of tsarist Russia. Emperors often led a secret life that their subjects and associates did not even know about. And so that their personal affairs were not available to a wide range of people, they had to resort to various tricks.
Dungeons of the rulers
Particularly popular were secret passages, with the help of which the ruling persons met with secret ambassadors, spies, and sometimes just lovers. With their help, rooms of palaces, and sometimes even separate buildings, were connected. The emperor (or empress), who did not want to be discovered, moved around quite often.
In the era of palace coups, underground tunnels acquired another function, even more important than the previous ones. Now they served as an emergency exit, which the ruler could use if there was a threat to his life. This did not save many of them, but how many cases were there when such moves nevertheless saved the kings from the attempts of the disaffected? Now this is difficult to judge due to the insufficient number of historical sources.
Various rumors regarding secret dungeons began to spread as early as the 18th century. Some of them had a foundation, for example, along the underground passage from the Gatchina Castle to the Silver Lake, in our time, even the route of one of the excursions was laid.
Certainly in Tsarskoe Selo there are many such moves. But the most significant secret of our time was the tsarist metro, built underground in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Rumors about it have been circulating for the second century, but until now researchers have not found confirmation of the existence of this mysterious object.
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Oldest Metro or Assassination Prevention?
People began to talk about the construction of a subway at the end of the 19th century. The source of these allegations is most likely the land work carried out near the Winter Palace. Their purpose, as it turns out from the records of K. P. Pobedonostsev, it was not the construction of an underground railway at all, but information that reached the authorities that members of the revolutionary organization "Narodnaya Volya" were preparing another attempt on the emperor's life. This time they dug an underground passage and planted a bomb right under the emperor's residence. Indeed, during the excavations, a mine charge was discovered, which, when triggered, could destroy the street adjacent to the palace.
It is not surprising that after that special underground rooms were built, in which professional miners were located, ready, if another bomb was found, to defuse it.
Naturally, this information was not available to ordinary people. But seeing the scale of the underground work being carried out, people who had heard about the technical capabilities of Europe and were confident that Russia was in no way inferior to it, spread rumors that Tsarskoye Selo and the Winter Palace would now be connected by a metro line built using the latest technology. Indeed, the scope of the work was amazing. Even A. F. Tyutchev noted their size in his notes. A. P. Valuev wrote in his diary that walking in some places of the palaces is strictly prohibited.
Mysterious works
But most of the legends associated with the laying of the secret underground are associated with the beginning of the 20th century. It was at this time, or rather in 1905, in connection with preparations for the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, that Nicholas II completely closed the access of visitors to the Alexander Palace.
The rumors that had been circulating up to this point had acquired an especially grandiose scale. There were even eyewitnesses who claim that they saw with their own eyes the tunnels and the train intended to transport the king's family in case of a threat. But if this is actually so, and secret passages in the palace connected the metro and all the emperor's residences, as "knowledgeable" people claimed, then why then the lives of the tsar and his family were so tragically cut short, and there is no evidence of attempts to escape? After all, the dungeons were supposed to connect all the rooms of the palaces, including those where they were imprisoned.
If this were indeed the case, then the imperial family would not even need help in order to elude their jailers. After all, even Catherine II, according to eyewitnesses, moving through secret labyrinths, remained unnoticed until she herself wanted to.
Questionable confirmation
In support of the theory of the construction of a secret underground line, supporters cite the fact that Parnassus Hill was created precisely to hide the secret entrance to the underground. But they forget the fact, which is confirmed by documentary sources. This facility was built in the middle of the 18th century, when the park ponds were being cleaned. No traces of excavation work carried out on the hill since then have been found.
Another "proof" is the power plant that powers the palace, which supposedly has too much power to be built just for the needs of the palace. However, it should be noted that Tsarskoe Selo became one of the first settlements, the lighting of which was produced entirely with the help of electricity. Accordingly, this required a lot of power. And, most likely, the power plant of the Aleksandrovsky Park served as a kind of "backup generator", from which, in the event of a failure, the entire power supply system of the settlement could be powered.
Could the creation of such a significant object as the metro remain secret and leave no records? After all, even the construction of not so significant underwater obstacles left behind a huge amount of papers confirming the fact of construction.
Where, after all, was the huge money spent, about 15 million rubles, which, according to legend, went to the construction of a secret metro line? Well, in our time there are many cases when large funds go into obscurity. It is likely that they also took place during the times of imperial Russia.
Plans for the construction of meters really existed in Russia at that time. But not at all in the St. Petersburg region, where it is difficult even with the use of modern technologies that are superior in development to those that could have been used more than a century ago. The construction of such a structure was planned in Moscow.