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Neglinnaya (river). Neglinka

History of the Neglinnaya River (Neglinka) in Moscow

The Neglinka River (Neglinaya) was first mentioned in the annals of 1401 as the Neglimna River. Over the years, it has had a number of names, including Neglinna, Neglimna and even Samoteka. There are several versions of the origin of this toponym.

One of them says that the name comes from the many swamps and swamps that were in its channel. "Neglinkok" in ancient times meant a swampy place with springs or just a swamp.

The next assumption, which was made by philologists, in particular, Galina Petrovna Smolitskaya, the name comes from the hydrological component of the river - its sandy and "non-clay" bed.

The toponym "Neglimna" is associated with the northern term, which sounds like "megla" (also - "negla" and "negla") and means "larch". In this case, a definition is given to the river, which is overgrown with larch.

The well-known philologist Vladimir Nikolayevich Toporov put forward another hypothesis in 1972 and connected the name of the Neglinna/Neglimna river with Baltic roots, breaking it into syllables - Ne-glim-in-. It is the root "gilm" in Lithuanian that means "depth". Thus, in the end we get a "shallow river".

Another name for Neglinnaya (Neglinka) - Samoteka - is associated with rivers that flowed from flowing ponds, i.e. flowed by itself. This toponym was applied to the river in its middle course in the area of the current Trubnaya Square and Seleznevskaya Street. Based on other sources, this was the name of the part of the river, starting from its upper reaches and up to the confluence with another river - the Naprudnaya.

The Neglinnaya River in antiquity

It is hard to believe today, but in ancient times the Neglinnaya (Neglinka) was a full-flowing river, which was used not only for fishing, building dams for water mills and as a means of communication, but also as an important fortification that protected the walls of the Kremlin from the western and northwestern directions.

The total length of the river channel was about 7.5 kilometers. The source was located in the area of the current Maryina Grove. During floods, the width of the river reached one and a half kilometers and a depth of up to 25 meters.

In the area of the current Samotechny Boulevard, the Naprudnaya River flowed into Neglinnaya, which originated in the area of Rizhsky Station and Trifonovskaya Street. The toponym is associated with the grand ducal settlement of Naprudnoe, which has been mentioned since the time of Ivan Kalita.

In the area of Samotechny lanes, both rivers - Neglinnaya and Naprudnaya - fell into the ponds that existed here interconnected, slowed down their course and the new current was already called Samoteka.

Neglinka in the 15th-17th centuries

The waters of this same Samotyok through a stone pipe once arranged fell straight into the Earthen City and then overflowed again in its course.

The next obstacle in the way of the river was an opening in the fortress wall of the White City, which was equipped with a grate. This gap was called the "Pipe" and was located in the area of the current Trubnaya Square.

Further, before confluence with the Moscow River, bridges were thrown across the bed of the Neglinnaya (Neglinka): Kuznetsky, Petrovsky (discovered during the reconstruction of the building of the Maly Theater), Voskresensky (near the former Resurrection Gates of Kitay-Gorod) and Troitsky (still located between the Kremlin towers - Trinity and Kutafya).

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the waters of the Neglinka filled the moat, which stretched along the Kremlin walls. During this period, there were six ponds along the entire course, some of which were drained in the middle of the 18th century.

In the spring flood, the Neglinnaya flooded the entire low-lying valley. To imagine this, let's list the areas that were flooded - these are the neighborhoods around Tsvetnoy Boulevard, the area from Rakhmanovsky Lane to Petrovka Street, the area between the Moscow Hotel and the State Duma building.

River in the 18th century

The Northern War, which lasted from 1700 to 1721, made its mark on the history of Neglinnaya (Neglinka). So, by order of Peter the Great, to protect the Kremlin walls, only along the riverbed were erected 5 bolters - defensive structures, which in plan were a triangle. This construction was associated with the diversion of the natural channel a little to the west of the former place, for which even the Swan Pond was lowered, located at the Borovitsky Gates.

The Swedes did not reach Moscow and in the period from 1821 to 1823 the bolters were dismantled.

In the 80s of the 18th century, in the area of the then existing Upper Neglinny Pond, an embankment was built, which was decorated using iron bars and wild stone. The project was made by engineer Ivan Kondratievich Gerard. Muscovites liked the place and became "a pleasant amusement park for all hunters to walk around."

It is worth noting that the waters of the Neglinnaya (Neglinka), as well as the Naprudnaya River with Samotechny Ponds, were clean and suitable for fishing. Ecological cleanliness, as they say today, was monitored by a special division of the Police Office: the townsfolk were forbidden to bathe horses and rinse clothes here. The Neglinensky ponds were rented out to merchants for fish breeding. During the winter, local ice was in demand because of its purity and it was harvested for the then "refrigerators" - glaciers.

True, the lower course of the river could not boast of such. Because of the heavy pollution, the dams in these places were called "nasty".

Neglinnaya (Neglinka) in the 19th century

In the period from 1817 to 1819, a three-kilometer section of the river was enclosed in a pipe, which was a brick vault. The underground collector was built according to the plan of a military engineer and surveyor Yegor Gerasimovich Cheliev, who, by the way, invented cement that can harden under water.

True, during strong floods and heavy rains, the river made its way to the surface - there was not enough space in the dungeon, and they clogged it thoroughly, forgetting to clean it.

In the 60s of the same century, another underground collector was commissioned, the length of which was about 1 kilometer.
In the source there is a very interesting and informative map of Neglinka, where all the numbers are deciphered when you click on them.

http://progulkipomoskve.ru/publ/statja/istorija_reki_neglinnoj_neglinki_v_moskve/40-1-0-1508

The river in the 20th century and today

In the 1970s, another collector was stretched from Trubnaya Square to the downstream Okhotny Ryad Street.

In 1997, an artificial channel of the Neglinnaya (Neglinka) was built on the territory between the Alexander Garden and Manezhnaya Square, where it once passed. Fountains were equipped here and sculptures were installed. The project was developed by the workshop of the sculptor and artist Zurab Tsereteli. Interestingly, 780 (!) cubic meters of water are used to provide a water extravaganza in a closed cycle.

Based on materials from the site of the free encyclopedia - Wikipedia.

Video about the Moscow river Neglinka

From a 20-minute video from the Soviet period about the Neglinka River (Neglinnaya), beautifully voiced by actor Vasily Lanov, you will learn:
about the former harsh nature of the river
take a trip through the streets of Moscow, where it flowed
hear the myths and stories associated with it and much more:

The artificial bed of the Neglinka

I managed to wander with an excursion in the most interesting place in Moscow - the underground collector of the Neglinka River from the Dostoevsky metro station to Revolution Square, as a result I became interested in the history of this glorious reservoir and found many answers to various burning questions.
Well, for example - how such a flood came out in the center of Moscow in May 2015:

However, even more questions have emerged.
As it turned out, there is a lot of inaccurate information, confusion with dates, names, etc. on the Internet and various articles about Neglinka.
You will laugh, but there is not even a reliable, accurate scheme of its collector on the Internet, the glorious Moscow diggers have not bothered to draw it up until now (although for thousands of man-hours spent there, they could already do it a hundred times).
The history of Neglinka's misadventures is also scattered over a bunch of different sources, which in places are very inaccurate or very incomplete.
Even Gilyarovsky has blunders!

I will try to compile everything that I have dug up at the moment and make a more systematic and accurate description of the history and modernity of this river and its environs than what I have come across.
I was inspired to do this by the most gorgeous and detailed post "Following Neglinnaya's footsteps" in three parts from deletant , which apparently contains the maximum amount of information about Neglinka. So I will try to rely on it first of all, with my amendments and additions.

Why is all this necessary? In addition to the fact that all this is just interesting, it is also very convenient when you are well oriented in the city in which you live.
And in order to navigate well, you need to know well where everything is located - streets, squares, buildings. Such information is much easier and faster to remember if it is connected by a single story, with vivid images and emotions. The most interesting thing is that the knowledge of the city then makes it easier to delve into a variety of historical and scientific facts. Such a systemic effect, this is how a whole picture of the world arises, with which it is convenient to live. And vice versa, if in the head there is only a bunch of fragmentary disparate information, including knowledge about the city, then life is very inconvenient.

We all received a funny confirmation of this theory when we met with our guide through the dungeon on Dostoevskaya. He wrote: We meet at the exit from the metro, at the house on Suvorovskaya Square. Damn, there are two exits to this square and both are "near the house on Suvorovskaya Square." As a result, in confusion, everyone rushed back and forth until they phoned him, when he finally became available on the mobile. Although it was worth pointing out something like "at the exit to the theater of the Soviet Army", everything would be clear without options. How could such a landmark be ignored?

By the way, this is where I will begin the description of the Neglinka channel with the surroundings in the past and present, from here we will go downstream to the Kremlin.
In fact, the Neglinka still goes higher and further north, towards Maryina Roshcha (there is its source), but I have not yet gone there.
For now, enough of what I have already seen and learned downstream, and this is a lot.

But there was a time, I thought that Neglinka was this Tseretel circus with horses on Manezhka:

Then I found out that it was just a fake from tap water, and I thought that the real Neglinka was lost somewhere in the sewers and would never be seen again.

But this turned out not to be the case!

It turns out that Neglinka is very easy to see, it turns out that you can walk almost along its entire course with your own feet.
And sometimes you don’t even need to go underground for this - see the flood video above. For 500 years, the Moscow authorities, starting with the princes, have been trying to somehow curb, redirect or hide this rivulet, but it still breaks through collectors with gates and hatches and directly conveys its seething greetings to us through the centuries. Like - here you go, take a bite!

Although, if you just look at the map of modern Moscow, even on the same Google, you can notice its channel.
It is marked by green areas, bridges and the names of streets and squares. From top to bottom - Samotechnaya Street, Samotechnaya Overpass, Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Trubnaya Square, Neglinnaya Street, Kuznetsky Most, Alexander Garden, Trinity Bridge.
Something like that:

We will go along this blue line to the Kremlin, which is not accidentally located at the confluence of the Neglinka with the Moscow River. This is the most typical device for ancient Russian cities - a fortress on a hill in a triangle between rivers or in a river bend. So that there is water on three sides.
Kyiv, Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod, Suzdal, Yaroslavl and so on.

The Slavs obviously learned this from the Finno-Ugric tribes of the Merya, who adored building their settlements in this way. And their ancestors, the tribes of the Dyakovo culture, built their fortified settlements from time immemorial, from the first millennium BC. Such an ancient settlement has been preserved on the territory of Moscow, in the Kolomensky Park.

It is just between the Moscow River and the Dyakov ravine with a stream. The Dyakovites chose high places surrounded by water and additionally surrounded their settlements with ramparts with a palisade. It turned out impressive.

Something similar happened on Borovitsky Hill, where the Kremlin is now.
The Slavs liked this idea and they began to settle in the same way. In addition to security, we received beautiful views of the surroundings and fresh air. In addition, the rivers served in those days as the main transport routes, there were practically no roads.

Although it is unlikely that a transport artery would have come out of Neglinka, since it is only 7.5 km long. You can hardly even call it a river, in fact it has always been just a stream, most of the year anyway. Only in spring she showed her temper, flooding the surroundings.

On Wikipedia, you can read that it used to be a full-flowing, deep river, an important means of communication .. blah blah - so this is nonsense, which is now being replicated by everyone.
Well, what can be a full-flowing river 7 km long? This misconception arose obviously from the fact that the river was dammed from the earliest times and, in fact, turned into a cascade of ponds in which fish were bred, water wheels were installed for mills and forges. At the Kremlin, the ponds worked as defensive ditches. These ponds on the map can be mistaken for a serious river. For example, let's take the most ancient plan of Moscow,
(Petrov drawing, 1597)

You might think that Neglinka is comparable in width to the Moska River.

In fact, even a weak stream is enough to make a huge pond.
It was in such a stream that we descended on the square of Samotechnaya Street.

Now the park looks like this:

In the old days, there was a giant pond (ponds), which can be traced on maps until 1877.

Here is an example of a map from 1739.

Above the Trinity Church you can see long ponds, which were called "gravity". Hence the street - Samotechnaya.
And below Trubnaya Square, Neglinka again turns into a winding stream, which is again dammed up near the walls of the Kremlin to organize ditches with water.

I think this shows quite convincingly that Neglinka has always been just a stream, so as not to return to this issue.

Now we look at the maps, what happened to the site above the Garden Ring.
Here is a map from 1877. We see large ponds, streams between them. Everything is outside.

But on the map of 1903, the ponds are already almost lowered and filled up, the river is partially drained into the collector, but there is still an open current along Samotechny Boulevard

Even on a map from 1912 on the Neglinka sewerage scheme in the Samoteka area, it is still outside. Red shows the sections taken into the pipe

I analyze it all in such detail, because I wanted to understand what year the collector was built, we began to roam.
Because there is no truth anywhere!
Our guide said it was 1906. The "deletant" says that in general, already in the 1880s, everything was removed into the chimney there. Who's into what! And everything is wrong.

So far, it turns out that this site was built somewhere between 1912 and 1914 (it seems like the WWI prevented further construction).
I'll stick with this date for now.

Now you can break away from these musty, dark dusty archives with a pure soul and finally dive into the bright and fragrant world of sewers.

How did this happen to us? We were 8 people. Everyone was given gloves, headlamps and shoe covers from an army chemical protection suit.

Boot covers are held on garters to the belt, exactly the same as erotic stockings for strippers.

I must say right away that this thing is inconvenient and unreliable, you can break through them and find yourself knee-deep in water in the middle 3 kilometers from the exit. Much better boots with a top, like hunting boots. In these was just Alex, our guide. Gloves are also better waterproof than rag ones.

Well, everyone is ready, climbed. Where exactly is this hatch, do not ask - we agreed not to fire the hall.
Alexei took off the lid and said - climb. I climbed, cho.

Useful, recalling Gilyarovsky freshly read on this occasion. And comparing experiences.
It's the first time I've taken on such an adventure.

And so, on a hot July day, we raised the iron grating of the drain well in front of Malyushin's house, near Samoteka, and lowered a ladder there. No one paid attention to our operation - everything was done very quickly: they raised the grate, lowered the ladder. Foul steam billowed from the hole. Fedya the plumber climbed first; the hole, damp and dirty, was narrow, the ladder stood vertically, the back shuffled against the wall. There was a splash of water and a voice, as if from a crypt:

- Get down, right!

No, that's not fair. The fearless uncle Gilyai of the plumber Fedya launched forward.
But on the other hand, we didn’t have any fetid steam and everything seems to be clean. But very much even paid attention walking along the boulevard.

I’ll clarify right away - Gilyai descended 500 meters downstream of us, already after the Gravity Overpass.
As I have already shown above, in his time the Neglinka flowed to Samotechnaya Square outside. Generally speaking, he descended literally 100 meters after Neglinka dived into the sewer. When did she get so stinky? with this ferry? - I do not understand. Where did the steam come from? It's not that cold for that. In short, I strongly suspect that Gilyarovsky is embellishing the whole story. Or he had other memories superimposed, after all, he climbed in other places.

I pulled up my hunting boots, buttoned up my leather jacket, and began to descend. Elbows and shoulders touched the walls of the pipe. Hands had to hold on tightly to the dirty steps of a sheer, swaying staircase, supported, however, by the worker who remained at the top. With each step down, the stench grew stronger and stronger. It was getting creepy. Finally, the sound of water and squelching was heard. I looked up. I could only see the square of a blue, bright sky and the face of the worker holding the ladder. A cold, bone-piercing dampness enveloped me.

At last I went down to the last step, and as I carefully lowered my foot, I felt a jet of water rustling against the toe of my boot.

- Go down boldly; stand there, you shallow little thing, - Fedya said to me in a muffled voice, in a grave voice.

I stood on the bottom, and the cold dampness of the water penetrated my hunting boots.

Well, my boot covers on the garters were already tightened to the very best, everything was buttoned up. We had to go down on comfortable, durable brackets. The main inconvenience was delivered by a fotik dangling around the neck. There was still no stench, except for such a slight marsh smell. Pleasant surprise! I looked up - the blue sky was in a circle, and the face in it was not a worker, but a blogger.

No cold dampness, the temperature is not much higher than at the top. 17 degrees there, I would say. Indeed, it was shallow, ankle-deep. But the water is cold and you can feel it with your feet. The water is very clear and clean in appearance. So merrily and quickly he runs to himself a semicircular bottom with sand.

A dark tunnel goes into the distance

I somehow out of place remembered "The Age of the Dead" by Andrey Cruz, where they fight off zombies in the sewers and it became creepy.
On the other side - a fork in the tunnels, as they say this confluence with another river - Naprudnaya. This fork is on all the above maps.

“I can’t light a light bulb, the matches are wet!” complains my companion.

I didn't have any matches. Fedya climbed back.

I was left alone in this walled-up crypt and walked knee-deep in the seething water for about ten steps. Has stopped. There was darkness all around me. The darkness is impenetrable, the complete absence of light. I turned my head in all directions, but my eyes did not distinguish anything.

No, we have LED flashlights, still progress. It is interesting that it is not so dark here, after all, a lot of light falls from the hatch. Apparently Gilyarovsky threw himself in a deeper place. Or they just didn't get used to it.

Finally all of us got down and we went.

To be continued

Few of the residents and guests of Moscow know that they are separated from the underground river in the center of the capital only by a sewer manhole and a couple of meters of land. Neglinka originates from the Pashensky swamp near Maryina Roshcha and, crossing the central quarters of the city from north to south, flows under the streets that owe their names to it: Samotechny square, boulevard and lane, Neglinnaya street and Trubnaya square.

The Neglinka is a legendary river of its kind. Not very long and full of water, it played a significant role in the life of Moscow: Neglinnaya contributed to the emergence of a valley on the banks of which the Kremlin stands. How the Neglinnaya River turned from a completely ordinary river into underground collectors, and what is its fate in modern Moscow, we will tell in this material.

The Neglinka River was first mentioned in the annals of the early 15th century under the name Neglimny. By the way, over the past years, this river has changed many names, including Neglinaya, Neglinna and Samoteka. According to one version, the last name appeared due to the fact that the middle course of the river in the area of the present Trubnaya Square flowed from flowing ponds, that is, it flowed by gravity.

The role of Neglinka in the life of Moscow residents

It's hard to imagine, but once the Neglinnaya was a full-flowing river with clean water, and in its lower reaches it was even navigable. At the beginning of the 16th century, water for the moat around the Kremlin wall came from Neglinnaya. Dams were built on the river, forming six interconnected ponds used for fish farming. Water from the ponds was also taken to extinguish fires that were frequent at that time.

Pollution problems

However, already in the middle of the 18th century, the waters of the Neglinnaya were heavily polluted, as they were used as a waste drain for the needs of the rapidly growing population of Moscow and the developing industry. Part of the ponds, it was decided to lower. It should be added that Neglinnaya flooded in full water and flooded neighboring streets. Therefore, by 1775, Catherine II drew up a project in which Neglinnaya was ordered to "turn into an open canal, with boulevards for walking along the banks."

Pipe construction

However, the open canal, fragrant throughout its length with sewage, did not contribute to improving the atmosphere in the capital, so it was decided to fill it up, having previously blocked it with arches. The military engineer E. Cheliev undertook the construction of the underground bed, and under his leadership, by 1819, part of Neglinnaya from Samotechochnaya Street to the mouth was enclosed in a pipe, which was a three-kilometer brick vault. And the banks of the former canal turned into Neglinnaya Street.

First overhaul

Half a century later, the Neglinnaya collector stopped coping with the flow of water. During strong floods and heavy rains, the river made its way to the surface. The situation was complicated by the owners of the houses, who arranged makeshift tie-ins through which sewage was dumped into the river. And 1886-87. under the leadership of engineer N. Levachov, a major overhaul of the underground channel was carried out. The tunnel was divided into three sections.

Shchekotovsky tunnel

In 1910-1914. According to the project of engineer M. Shchekotov, a section of the Neglinka collector was built, located under Theater Square. This tunnel, exactly 117 meters long, runs next to the Metropol Hotel and the Maly Theatre. Now it is called in honor of its creator - "Shchekotovsky Tunnel", and illegal excursions around Neglinka are usually held here.

Flood problem

Despite the construction of more and more collectors, flooding did not stop - in the mid-60s of the last century, the Neglinka again broke out to the surface and flooded some streets so much that they had to travel by boat. When in the early 1970s the collector from Trubnaya Square to the Metropol Hotel was renovated and significantly expanded, the flooding finally stopped.

Neglinka at the end of the 20th century

By 1997, the studio of the artist and sculptor Zurab Tsereteli completed a project that included the reconstruction of the Neglinka riverbed from Alexander Garden to Manezhnaya Square. This artificially maintained closed loop reservoir is not really an attempt to bring a section of the river out of the ground, as many Muscovites believe. At the moment, the imitation of Neglinka in this place is equipped with fountains and sculptures.

The rivers Neglinnaya (marked with an arrow), Yauza (on the right) and the Moskva River in the figure A. Vasnetsova "View of Moscow from a bird's eye view in the XII century." The Neglinnaya River, before flowing into the Moskva River, went around Borovitsky Hill, on which the first Slavic settlement arose 1000 years ago in a dense pine forest. In pagan times, Borovitsky Hill was called the Witch's Mountain and there was a temple of the ancient gods on it.

Change of river names in history

The role of Neglinka in the life of Moscow residents

Pollution problems

Pipe construction

First overhaul

Shchekotovsky tunnel

Flood problem

Neglinka at the end of the 20th century

Three centuries ago, it was impossible to imagine Moscow without the Neglinnaya River. But the city developed rapidly, and by the end of the 18th century the river turned into a sewer. They even tried to improve it: ponds appeared on the site of Tsvetnoy Boulevard, and along the entire length of the current Neglinnaya Street, the riverbed was straightened and stone embankments were built. But this did not save from the smells of sewage, and they decided to shackle the fetid river into a pipe. This was done in 1819, just during the mass reconstruction of Moscow during the restoration after the fire of 1812.

Underground Moscow is a whole world, and Neglinnaya is the most famous and well-traveled underground river of the capital.

Let's take a walk along the old underground river and see how things look now —>

It would seem that Neglinka remained only in names - Neglinnaya Street, Kuznetsky Most. You can also go down to the Museum of Archeology and admire the Resurrection Bridge. Or approach the Trinity Bridge from the Kutafya Tower, and imagine that instead of a stream of people along the Alexander Garden, Neglinnaya carries its waters under the arch of the bridge. And few people think about the fate of the river after its imprisonment in the collector.

Let us turn to the Neglinnaya collector scheme:

Pre-revolutionary collectors are marked in red, Soviet collectors are marked in black.
So, we go down and find ourselves in the collector of 1906, with stunning brickwork.

We are under the square on Samotechnaya Street. View upstream to the north: the Neglinnaya collector goes to the left, straight ahead - the Naprudnaya river, the left tributary of the Neglinka.

All elements of the collector are very beautiful, despite the fact that this is an absolutely utilitarian structure.

Once again, look up before heading down the river. The hatch is very close, the surface of the earth is only a meter from the arch of the tunnel.

Before us is a straight section of 1906, we are under Samotechny Boulevard, we are going towards the Garden Ring.

Along the way, we meet various interesting things. For example, storm drain collectors. This is also 1906. All these tunnels were built in an open way. The egg-shaped form was obtained thanks to the wooden formwork, which was lined with bricks, and then moved on.

Smaller streams were allowed through ceramic pipes. These pipes were made at the beginning of the 20th century at a ceramic factory in the town of Borovichi. Pay attention to the elegant section with four stripes. When laying new concrete pipes, the old ceramic ones were filled up. Here, a tree root comes out of the pipe. Moreover, it was much larger, part of it had already been chopped off.

A little closer to the Garden Ring, the brick collector is plastered. In some places it is crossed by other communications. The river seems very muddy and dirty. But, it is worth noting that in Moscow the sewerage and storm drain systems are separate. There are no bad smells in the Neglinnaya sewer, it smells of rainy dampness! Although, for example, in St. Petersburg, Paris, London, Kyiv and many other cities, sewerage and stormwater systems are common.

And here we are at the Garden Ring. There is a whole crossroads of underground roads. On the left is Neglinka's understudy. More to the left is a small tributary.
There was a snow chute here. Instead of a concrete slab, there was a grate on top through which snow was thrown into the collector from above back in the early 2000s.

Small tributary on the right side. A ladder is visible upstairs and a well leading to the hatch.

We cross the Garden Ring. This is a collector from the 1880s. The base, the water tray and the lower parts of the walls are made of white stone. Above - plastered brick. Attention! There is a sharp left turn ahead.

Until 1974, the collector went further straight, and then a new tunnel was laid parallel to it on the left, and now the river turns 90 degrees to the left, in its direction. The old collector was preserved, but the passage to it was blocked. Now it can only be reached from Trubnaya Square. What is there, around the corner?

Around the corner is a waterfall, albeit a small one. It is not difficult to overcome it.

You can get to this place if you turn left after the waterfall, against the current of the river. This is part of the 1974 tunnel under the Garden Ring, so there is no current here.

From the jumper with the waterfall we, together with the waters of the Neglinnaya, turn sharply to the right and find ourselves in a long reinforced concrete sewer under Tsvetnoy Boulevard. And yet, why did they lay a new collector here parallel to the old one? The reason is floods. And it's not just the 19th century. Imagine, in the 1960s and early 1970s, Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Trubnaya Square turned into a water surface several times.

1960 flood. Neglinnaya street

The old collector of 1819 did not always cope with the volume of water during heavy summer showers. Almost every year there were small floods, Muscovites especially remember the floods of 1949, 1960, 1965 and 1973.

1960 flood. Garden Ring, Samotechnaya Square. Ahead is Tsvetnoy Boulevard.

The patience of the city authorities snapped, and in 1974 they laid a new concrete sewer, much wider than the original one. The difference is obvious, the old collector passed only 13.7 m3 / s of water, and the new one - 66.5 m3 / s. Neglinka was tamed, and since then it has not gone outside.

The collector was built in an open way, from precast concrete elements. The new tunnel ran from the Garden Ring to Teatralny Proyezd: under Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Neglinnaya Street.

The hatch and the light from it are very close.

We pass the entire Tsvetnoy Boulevard along the concrete sewer of 1974, and turn right under Trubnaya Square. This is what we were looking for - the legendary "Gilyarovsky Path", a fragment of the original collector of 1819. Water has not flowed here for more than 40 years.

Vladimir Gilyarovsky:
“And on a hot July day, we raised the iron grate of the drain well in front of Malyushin’s house, near Samoteka, and lowered a ladder there. No one paid attention to our operation - everything was done very quickly: they raised the grate, lowered the ladder. A fetid steam was pouring out of the hole.

Malyushin's house is house 19. It was located at the site of the current exit from the Tsvetnoy Bulvar metro station. From there, Gilyarovsky walked along the Neglinka to Trubnaya Square. And climbed to the surface approximately where we enter this area:

Gilyarovsky trail. This original sewer is wider and lower in cross-section than the one that runs under Gravity Street. The photo was taken from point 1 (look at the map).

Gilyarovsky:
“I was left alone in this walled-up crypt and walked knee-deep in the seething water for ten steps. Has stopped. There was darkness all around me. The darkness is impenetrable, the complete absence of light. I turned my head in all directions, but my eyes did not distinguish anything.

I hit my head on something, raised my hand and felt the wet, cold, warty, slime-covered stone vault and nervously jerked my hand away ... It even became frightening. It was quiet, only the water gurgled below. Every second of waiting for a worker with fire seemed like an eternity to me.

Gilyarovsky:
“With the help of a light bulb, I examined the walls of the dungeon, damp, covered with thick slime. We walked for a long time, in some places plunging into deep mud or inaccessible, fetid liquid mud, in some places bending over, since the drifts of mud were so high that it was impossible to go straight - I had to bend down, and still I reached the vault with my head and shoulders. My feet sank into the mud, occasionally bumping into something hard. All this swam with liquid mud, it was impossible to see, and indeed it was before that.

We have reached point 2. Now this collector is a dead end. The water here is stagnant, and since there is no current, further - impassable mud. Somewhere out there, in the distance, is the same hatch into which Gilyarovsky descended.

Gilyarovsky:
“Again, above us is a quadrangle of clear sky. A few minutes later we stumbled upon a rise under our feet. There was a particularly thick heap of mud here, and, apparently, something had been piled up under the mud... They climbed over the heap, illuminating it with a lamp. I poked around with my foot, and something bounced under my boot ... We stepped over the pile and went on. In one of these drifts, I managed to see halfway covered with silt the corpse of a huge dog. It was especially difficult to get over the last skid before the exit to Trubnaya Square, where the stairs were waiting for us. Here the mud was especially thick, and something always slipped underfoot. It was scary to think about it.
But Fedya still broke through:
“I say it right: we go after people.”

And this could well be true, because the places around are gangsters - the slum Grachevka with taverns, brothels and rooming houses. What is only one tavern Hell - a hotbed of crime. In the middle of the 19th century, Governor-General Zakrevsky even ordered the trees on Trubnoy Boulevard to be cut down so that bandits would not hide in the thickets. And on the boulevard itself, flower shops were set up to cultivate it and the most criminal boulevard in Moscow was renamed Tsvetnoy.

The vault is brick and plastered, the base is white stone. On the bricks of the vault there are hallmarks:

Brick stamp with the abbreviation KAZ. These stamps date back to the 1810s - 1830s, which corresponds to the construction of the Neglinnaya collector.

We return along the Gilyarovsky path back to Trubnaya Square.

By the way, Trubnaya Square is called so not because the Neglinka flows in the pipe. The name is much older. In this place, from the end of the 16th century, Neglinnaya crossed the fortress wall of the White City. For some reason, the arch in the wall for the river was called a pipe:

Trubnaya Square at the beginning of the 18th century. Reconstruction by Apollinary Vasnetsov

The name spread to the surrounding area and then justified itself when the river was really chained into a "pipe". Tsvetnoy Boulevard in the first half of the 19th century was called Trubnoy.

And now a little about the inhabitants of Neglinnaya.

Where without cockroaches! Here they are of a noble color, the color of mahogany. 3-4 centimeters long. In 2010, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov came down to Neglinka and spoke about others, white and 10 cm:

“Large cockroaches live and thrive there, which we could not even imagine in our everyday life - about ten centimeters. They are white, because it is dark there, and they do not want a person to touch them with their hands. I tried this but they immediately jump into the water. They are good swimmers.

Suddenly, the concrete sewer breaks and beauty awaits us ahead:

In the frame, the so-called Shchekotovsky tunnel is a section laid by engineer M.P. Shchekotov in 1914 under Theater Square. This section is only 117 meters long, 3.6 meters high and 5.8 meters wide. Not just a monument of engineering art, but also an insanely beautiful place. The brickwork is amazing! There is not a single corner here, the entire section line is smooth, as if the influence of Art Nouveau is felt. Everything was built using wooden formwork. And this is the only one of the pre-revolutionary tunnels of the Neglinnaya, in which there are sidewalks on the sides of the man-made river bed. There is evidence that they wanted to make the entire Neglinnaya collector from Tsvetnoy Boulevard the same, but the outbreak of the First World War prevented it.

In the previous frame, traces of exits of the old sewer from the beginning of the 19th century are visible on the sides, which is now out of service.

The turn of the Shchekotovsky tunnel is the most beautiful place in the Neglinnaya. It was here that Yuri Luzhkov descended.

This tunnel runs from the corner of the Maly Theater obliquely under Teatralnaya Proyezd, and makes a turn already under Theater Square. Prior to its construction, the narrow old sewer ran from Neglinnaya Street almost to the wall of the Metropol Hotel and turned right at a right angle. For this reason, great blockages constantly occurred here, and because of them - floods. The construction of the Shchekotovsky tunnel solved the problem in the Theater Square area.

In the meantime, we approached the finish point - the slide chamber under the park on Theater Square.

Fork. The collector under the blocks of Kitay-gorod goes straight out, flowing into the Moscow River near Zaryadye. It was built in 1966 in a closed way (driving shield). And to the right is the old collector of 1819, passing under the Alexander Garden. It was reconstructed and is now used as a reserve watercourse in case of a strong reservoir filling. Three years ago, through this tunnel it was possible to reach the place where it flows into the Moscow River at the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge. But then bars were put here and any movement in this tunnel is subject to complex approvals from the FSO.

We are standing at point 4 - at the fork. Point 3 - the beginning of the Shchekotovsky tunnel.

The beauty of Moscow even underground!

Text: Alexander Ivanov
Photo: found on the Internet