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Moscow Information Guide |Rus-a| Mystical Places in Moscow
One step beyond reality...
With Moscow doing its best to impress both foreigners and natives, implementing latest technologies, developing infrastructure and adapting to the world standards of living, one may hardly imagine mystery and magic hiding behind walls and prospects of the Russian capital. However, there are many places where the very atmosphere may puzzle visitors falling short of rational explanation. Here we’ve picked up the places you may come across while touring around the center.
Patriarshiye Ponds
One of the most picturesque yards in the old city center, surrounded by respectable blocks of flats, embassies, nice small restaurants, Patriarshiye Ponds are equally loved by hipsters, moms with babies and senior citizens. The place is widely associated with the supernatural thanks to prominent Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, whose front novel “The Master and Margarita” begins exactly here, near the pond. Berlioz and Bezdomny sit on the bench in front of one of the houses (Malaya Bronnaya, 32). Bulgakov’s fans turned the place into one of the memorials to him and his artistic legacy and claim that the best way to feel the mystery of the novel is to come to the Patriarshiye Ponds. Other symbolic buildings from the novel can also be found in Moscow.
Tipp: in winter the pond turns into one of the most popular Moscow ice rinks, skates are for rent
Address: Bolshoy Patriarshiy Pereulok 7/1 ; Mayakovskaya metro station.
Kuznetsky Most
Another famous place in the center of Moscow associated more with shopping and midday coffee than with supernatural creatures and curses of the past centuries. But on the sunset the ghost of a young beautiful woman in a long dress is believed to terrorize journalists and other people connected with the press. According to the legend, this woman was a lover of Savva Morozov – Russian textile magnate and philanthropist of the 20th century.
She heard of his committing suicide from a newsy while driving through the street, rushed to buy a newspaper and got under the wheels herself. That night the boy was found dead near the street and the ghost of the woman avenges those whose colleagues brought her the news. Meeting her is a bad sign.
Address: Kuznetsky Most Street is located in the center of Moscow. Nearest Metro Stop is "Kuznetski Most".
Lavrenty Beria’s house
Lavrenty Beria’s house
The building of the today’s Tunisian Embassy used to belong to Stalin’s confederate Lavrenty Beria, the notorious General Commissioner of State Security. Since then his phantom, which can’t be seen, but only heard, appears from time to time near the corner of Malaya Nikitskaya Street and Vspolny Alley. If you listen carefully, you may hear the sound of an approaching car, resembling that of the old Beria’s ZIL limousine. The car stops outside the porch, the door slams, steps are heard, and the passenger discusses something with his driver in a low voice. Some also say they have heard groans from tortured men and women, killed outside the house, but Beria never interrogated or tortured anyone at his home, so this is more an impact of the sinister atmosphere of the place, which embassy employees sometimes lament.
Address: Malaya Nikitskaya Street 28/1 ; Barrikadnaya metro station.
The Sukharev Square
The Sukharev Square
The Sukharev Square has been surrounded with mystery since 1701, when infamous Sukharev Tower was build here as a residence for one of the supporters of Peter the Great – Yakov Bruce. Oficially he was a scientist, watching the stars through a telescope from the top of the tower, but people considered him an alchemist and even a wizard. They believed Yakov could change the weather and had a black magic book that could point the way to the treasures, hidden in a tower wall, and contained a recipe for the immortality elixir.
In 1930s Sukharev Tower was removed as it hampered the traffic, but its foundation appeared to be so hard to bore that it was left under the pavement. Although it’s been proved the treasure never existed, the black book was nothing but the journal where Bruce made calculations concerning the stars and engineering, some still believe his ghost appears at night and looks at the place where his tower was situated.
On the photo you can admire the painitng "The Sukharev Tower" by outstanding Russian artist Alexei Savrasov
Bersenevskaya Embankment
The bloody history of the embankment fragment right in front of the Kremlin began in the 16th century. One of the boyars, Ivan Bersen-Beklemishev, once Russian ambassador to Poland and member of several other diplomatic missions, owned a house here. But due to his tough disposition he started to fall into disgrace under Vasiliy III and was beheaded on trumped-up charges. Ivan the Terrible presented his house to Malyuta Skuratov, one of the leaders of the Oprichnina – repressions, who used the house and its basement to torture and execute his enemies. He ordered to build a tunnel under the river straight to the Kremlin, where bones and skeletons of his victims were later found alongside with torture instruments. Next owner, who built another house instead of the previous one, Averkiy Kirillov, a botanist and a clerk in the Boyars’ Council, also died under bloody circumstances – he was killed during the Streltsy uprising of 1698.
The fatal history of this house ended, but a new one began in 1928 when Stalin ordered to build a house for civil servants and military elite (widely known as “the House on the Embankment”) right nearby. Many residents and their families (almost 1/3) were detained during Stalin's terror in the late 1930s, so the mystical history of the place continued. Memorial plates can be found on the walls of the house.
Address: Bersenevskaya embankment, 20 (Averkiy Kirillov’s house); Serafimovicha Street, 2 (the House on the Embankment).
Tipp: for more information concerning the House on the Embankment and its residents have a look at the novella written by Yuri Trifonov (1975) of the same name.
