Petersburg secrets

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Headless horseman

The poet wrote practically from nature: an eyewitness, Vasily Berkh, told him about what happened during the flood. How huge waves walked through the streets, about drowned men rushing through the water, about districts destroyed by the elements … And about the Bronze Horseman's sculpture towering over all this horror.

Naturally, the monument to Peter I was not damaged. After all, its pedestal - "Thunder-stone" - weighs 1600 tons, and the initial mass of the monolith before processing was at least 2500 tons. Even for modern construction equipment, these are limiting numbers. A crane capable of handling such a load appeared only recently, this is the German colossus Liebherr LR13000. But even today they will not be able to transport cobblestones weighing more than 150 thousand poods by off-road.

Nevertheless, textbooks contain illustrations of how a giant stone was transported to the city. The block was allegedly first dragged to the coast of the Gulf of Finland, loaded on board a ship and by sea, and then taken to the place along the Neva. It would seem that everything is simple - they caught up with more peasants, there were enough serfs. However, the laws of physics cannot be fooled.

The Gulf of Finland remained unnavigable until 1885. Until the Sea Canal was dug, the ships were unloading in Kronstadt. Vessels with a draft of about two meters could walk along the “Marquisovaya Puddle”. The only option is to build a huge punt that can support the weight of a giant block. “Theoretically, the displacement of such a vessel should be at least 4,000 tons, although people have never built such wooden floating craft. Again, theoretically, a weight of 2–2, 5 thousand tons can be lifted by a flat-bottomed barge measuring 30x60 meters. But it will simply collapse - the longitudinal strength of the entire structure will be extremely low, Mikhail Rudenko, chief designer of the Baltsudoproekt Central Design Bureau, explains to Kultura.

It turns out that the "funny pictures" about the transportation of the monolith by fragile wooden boats are falsification? But the stone is lying! We just don't know how long he has been there.

Everything is not easy with the equestrian statue. The rider has no stirrups, he is dressed in a toga, and a Roman sword hangs on his side. Most of the sculptural images of Peter the Great are completely different, there he is in clothes of the 18th century, the horses have normal harness, and there is order with weapons. Here is a complete set of anachronisms. Stirrups appeared only in the 6th century, swords went out of use long before Ivan the Terrible, and there was never a weapon in Russia, as on this monument. Allegory in the Roman style? Yes, the Frenchman Etienne Falcone, who is credited with the authorship of the monument, could have simply copied some kind of Roman monument.

And if nothing is copied at all … It is known that when casting the statue turned out without a head - a mistake came out. The version suggests itself: a certain antique statue was "modified".

- Here is the head of the Bronze Horseman, an exact copy. It was sculpted by Falcone's student, Marie-Anne Collot. And the pupils, as you can see, were made in the form of hearts, out of great love for Tsar Peter Alekseevich. The separately cast head was then attached to the statue, - says and shows the chief researcher of the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, candidate of historical sciences Marina Logunova.

However, the Bronze Horseman is the easiest. And if you look around, then a great many mysteries, and completely inexplicable ones, will appear.

Below sea level

The Promenade des Anglais - buildings built in the early 18th century. For some reason, the basement floors of the buildings are drowned deep in the ground, the steps go 2-3 meters down. That is, to the level of the Neva. Meanwhile, the builders could not have been unaware of frequent floods. The highest river rose in 1691 - by 7, 6 meters. In 1703, already three months after the foundation of the city, Peter witnessed how the water level "soared" by two meters. And the would-be builders, you see, turned out to be so stupid that they erected buildings where not only the basement, but also the first floor was flooded. In the city, almost the entire historical center is made up of clearly understated buildings. Doesn't it seem strange?

Let's try to clarify this issue from the St. Petersburg historians.

- Indeed, judging by the documents of the beginning of the 18th century, the cultural layer has not grown much over 250 years, the basement floors of the buildings of the historical center were more than half drowned in the ground even then. The level of the Neva also did not change. But we do not know how to explain this, - says Marina Logunova.

Menshikov Palace: the entire first floor is below ground level. The neighboring Kunstkamera is the same. Winter Palace - huge basement windows go into the ground, where a full-fledged floor with high ceilings is located. And the Peter and Paul Fortress near the walls is heaped with earth for two meters. In any case, the foundations of the Petrovsky Gates, now dug out, are located in a deep trench.

And so everywhere. One gets the impression that the whole city was once simply covered with a thick layer of earth. Or covered with a lot of dirt. Was there really a flood that we don't know about?

Capital of the megaliths

Window openings on the first floor of the Admiralty are located just a meter from the ground. A beautiful granite cladding goes deep into the soil. Why?.. However, the building attracts the attention of researchers not only because of this: there are anchors on the pedestals near it. The weight of each monolithic granite parallelepiped is about 20 tons. No functionality. It is easier (and ten times cheaper) to fold such a curbstone out of bricks and then plaster it. But someone was not too lazy to cut huge boulders and drag them into the city.

In 1982, a bathtub was brought to the Peter and Paul Fortress, carved with jewelry precision from a solid block of pink granite. It was bought from someone from the townspeople for 200 rubles. But who did it and when - there is no information. However, there is a bigger "bath" in St. Petersburg. Polished walls, geometrically perfect surfaces, mirror polish. The diameter of the product is 5.5 meters, the height is two meters, the weight of the workpiece is more than 160 tons. Historians do not like to recall the "inconvenient" artifact.

But it's best to hide what is in plain sight. Column of Alexandria - granite, 600 tons, 25.6 meters, a perfect truncated cone with a diameter of 3.5 meters at the base and 3.14 meters at the top. Smooth as a laser beam, as if descended from a titanic lathe. Excellent polish, everything shines. The base, on which the pillar stands, weighs another hundred tons, and under it a 500-ton stone cube goes into the ground. Finally, the mass of the workpiece from which the column itself was made exceeds a thousand tons.

- Monolithic columns are made on a kind of lathe, we also have one, the maximum length of the product is 3.7 meters. There are units that make 10-meter columns. Anything greater is composite. Our world - stone processors - is quite small, we know our colleagues all over the planet, and no one has such technologies and never had,”explains Rafael Mekhtiyev, general director of Danila Master.

Again, there are drawings that depict the work of transporting the pillar and lifting it. “Carrying a convoy weighing 500-600 tons is the smallest problem. Although wooden punt boats with such a carrying capacity are also not very real. But loading it in the absence of cranes, and then unloading it, is simply impossible. If you roll on board, a heel will appear, and the ship will immediately sink. At our shipyards, a crane with a lifting capacity of 500 tons is a rarity. And until recently there were no such people at all,”concludes Mikhail Rudenko.

Eternal Steps

But the Tsar Bath and the Pillar of Alexandria are far from the only ones of their kind, in St. Petersburg there is enough of such good. And also in plain sight. Meet St. Isaac's Cathedral, the wonder of the world. Without any exaggeration.

48 monolithic (!) Granite columns, each weighing 114 tons and 14.1 meters long, they are absolutely identical and perfect from a geometric point of view. Above, around the drum, there are 24 columns. Each weighing 63 tons and 11, 14 meters long. Let's add here small columns in the belfries - 32 more pieces. These are smaller: only 10 tons and 6, 34 meters. Everything is the same - in-line production.

The foundation of the temple is also noteworthy. It rests on titanic granite blocks, the "bricks" are 6 meters long, 2-3 meters wide and about a meter thick (40-50 tons). They are also perfectly smooth, shiny, edges - like a razor. They also have steps. The architects were somehow not particularly fooled: we need a ladder - we just cut it down in the monolith. We worked with granite like with some kind of clay. Ideal interior angles are especially noteworthy - where three planes converge. Technological puzzle.

- Frankly, I don't know how it was done. True, there are enough such mysteries in the world, with my own eyes I saw a lot of ancient stone products, which were made, it is not clear by whom, when and with the help of what tool. But not with primitive chisels - that's for sure, - reflects Rafael Mekhtiev.

On hands of stone

Today very few people believe in the official version of the origin of the Atlanteans of the New Hermitage. “One sculptor made arms for all the statues, another for legs, and a third for heads, so they came out the same,” - somehow it’s not even funny. Reminiscent of the well-known humoresque of Arkady Raikin about the atelier. There, as you know, with a similar "brigade contract" everything turned out crooked. Here is a masterpiece.

Either they were cast, or they were made on some CNC machines - other options have not been discussed for a long time. The high-tech version is also supported by the "author's inscription", which can be seen on the extreme right giant closest to the wall. The year and the name of the "sculptor" are engraved surprisingly roughly compared to the ideal lines of the statues.

The inside is even funnier. Immediately you find yourself in the forest from the columns, there are dozens of them here. The ones right next to the entrance are made of the same dark gray granite as the Atlanteans. All products are completely identical, and they are also monoliths: they weigh tens of tons. And other elements of the building structure give out the presence of in-line production, some GOST standards, unification and quality control. And this is a completely different level of development of civilization. Modern or, in view of our inability to replicate these products, higher.

In 1985, a monument to Lenin was erected on October Square in Moscow. The basis for it was a monolithic granite column - a cylinder 10 meters high and weighing 50 tons. They cut it out, processed it and brought it up to condition for two whole years! And the transportation to the place of installation was shown on television as a triumph of modern technology. And you shouldn't scoff at the Soviet builders, they worked perfectly. By the way, note: the base on which the monolith stands is not solid, it is assembled from pieces - small granite blocks. Well, we don't know how to work with a stone …

Earlier, it turns out, they knew how. Kazan Cathedral is a construction from the same "megalithic" series, with many standard monolithic columns. 96 outside (each about 15 meters) and 56 inside (10, 7 meters), And, judging by the official history, built in an unrealistically short time - in just ten years.

The New Hermitage was allegedly rebuilt in nine years, but more than 30 were fiddling with St. Isaac's Cathedral.

Huge plans

There are a lot of ambiguities with Isaac. A completely finished temple appears in drawings that date back to different years, scatter - decades. According to the main version, the cathedral began to be built in 1819 and finished in 1858. But on the old images it was completely ready already in 1820, there is information that it stood in 1802 and even earlier. Whom to believe?

- In the images of various authors, indeed, "the testimonies diverge." This can be explained both by the inaccuracy with the dates, and by the fact that different cathedrals are drawn. So, the building of the third St. Isaac's Church, which was designed by Rinaldi, and completed by Brenna, was completed in 1802. It had three entrances, not four porticos as it is now. Montferrand, in fact, rebuilt the temple, preserving at the request of Alexander I the already existing altar part and changing the shape of the belfries, - explains the scientific secretary of the museum complex "The State Museum-Monument" St. Isaac's Cathedral "Elena Chernysheva.

What exactly the Frenchman rebuilt and to what extent is, of course, an interesting question. But the documents on the previous construction have not survived at all. Did they build something from scratch or also something "repaired"?..

And here's another riddle. In the famous drawing of Prince Grigory Gagarin, a kind of dilapidated stone building stands around the Alexandrian column. Moreover, the design of the scaffolding does not at all coincide with the drawings-reports of Montferrand. Perhaps because the Russian aristocrat drew from life, did not invent anything?

Fortunately, another noteworthy document has survived - "Axonometric Plan of St. Petersburg 1765–1773". Looking at it, you come across amazing discoveries. The city is a little more than half a century old, and all embankments are already faced with stone. Moreover, for some reason, part of the quarters is drawn dilapidated, in some places the interfloor ceilings have been preserved near the buildings. Here and there real miracles are found. For example, in the center of St. Petersburg there was a building, 20 meters high, with buttresses along all the walls. Its upper part was somewhat reminiscent of Lenin's mausoleum on Red Square.

- We know about the drawing of Prince Gagarin, its authenticity is beyond doubt, as well as the "Axonometric Plan". A huge building with buttresses really once stood in the city. What it was, where it went and when is unknown. There are also ambiguities with the construction of the Alexandria Column and other monuments, - Marina Logunova notes.

Tourists are not allowed into the cellars of St. Isaac's Cathedral; an exception was made for the Kultura correspondent. And here is another full-fledged floor. “Apparently, the basement was designed like a crypt or“lower church”. Here, look, there are special niches in the walls that could be used to install decorative elements or lamps,”shows Elena Chernysheva. Niches are almost at the very ground, that is, the floor is poured at least a meter and a half, or even two. It turns out that the building originally stood higher than the ground level.

The basements of the Smolny Cathedral are also not a tourist attraction. 47 steps go into the depths of the earth, I am at a depth of about 12-13 meters. The walls are made of bricks and blocks of "Putilovsky stone" (a kind of limestone), high vaults. Another mysterious "lower church". And next to the temple, archaeologists discovered a very titanic foundation, it is believed that it was made for a 150-meter bell tower. But then the base of the mega-tower was buried for some reason. Wonders…

Is Russian Etruscan?

"Paradise" (paradise) - this is what Peter I called St. Petersburg. A strange name for the deserted swampy coast of the Baltic, where the young tsar was eager with prohibitive energy. Or is it not deserted?.. “Cutting a window” to Europe could have been much easier. Riga and Revel - ports with a developed infrastructure - were captured already in 1710, and without any special losses. De facto St. Petersburg was no longer needed. Or was it not about the "window"?

"Northern Palmyra" - this is how Peter began to be called in the middle of the 18th century. It was then that information appeared about Palmyra - a mysterious ancient city in Syria, it is not clear by whom and when it was built. There are also titanic colonnades, huge temples, quarters of the ruins of majestic buildings. Historians are composing versions of its origin, but they have not yet invented anything plausible.

Not everything is simple with the history of our "cultural capital", and everyone can be convinced of this. It is enough to walk along the streets of Northern Palmyra. See and touch with your hands all the curiosities mentioned in this material. And who built it and when - let the professionals figure it out. But it is necessary to clarify, because the wildest versions have already appeared. We haven't reached an agreement with the humanoids yet, but there will be more …

Interestingly, there are similar mysterious objects in Europe. Aqueducts, which can only be built using laser theodolites, villas with completely modern plumbing, "eternal" roads-via and much more. And then there are the texts of the predecessors of the Romans - the Etruscans. Etruscum non legitur ("Etruscan not read") - this statement was made an axiom. Perfectly readable! In Russian. Back in the 19th century, the scientist Tadeusz Wolanski read a lot of inscriptions, for which he was persecuted in the Western scientific world. Perhaps all this - both Peter and other objects - were built by our ancestors? And Peter I knew about it. And the European historians, who later occupied the Russian Academy of Sciences, staged a grandiose forgery?..

Nils JOHANSEN