Is there a Conduit under the Fortress?

     The Old Ladoga fortress involuntary predicates thoughts about conduits and catacombs. The Kremlin of Old Ladoga is not an exception as well. At different times the lovers of history and exciting mysteries left the detailed reports about their journeys around the conduit they got into from the fortress towers.

     In 1811 major general Gerard sallied into the remains of “Riurik fortress”. He told to the world through the magazine “Sorevnovatel” how he discovered a pass awash with stones in one of the towers. He penetrated through the pass to “the stone ladder which led him into a spacious quadrangular room, from which he went down the same stairs to another room similar to the first one. From that place the catacomb stretched widely but he was unable to continue his exploration; extremely dense and humid air made it hard to breathe and numerous bats blocked his way.”

     The mention about bats brings into the memory the mazes of the Tanechkiny caves at northern side of Old Ladoga.

     In 1884 the participants of the expedition that teamed up literator Alexander Bashutsky, the former secretary of the Council of State and the current priest of St. Nicolas convent father Antony (Bochkov), the hieromonk of the same convent and the deacon of Ladoga Savva Belyaev narrated in the magazine “Grazhdanin” about their adventures in the catacombs of Old Ladoga fortress. “Under the south-eastern angle tower of the fortress a ramshackle door had survived with an iron bolt and an iron chain on the lock leading to the river through which the aforementioned persons having got the door key from the priest of St. George church and reserved a lantern, a spade and a scrap went to see the curious pass. Soon the travelers had to scramble with danger in the half-light between the crumbly out of humidity stone vaults of suspended gallery. The gallery walls were covered with thick layer of pale-green mould; the hands sank in that mould not meeting something solid to hold on. The air became suffocating, the noise of the rolling waves stood over their heads. The pat of the disgusting animals arose from everywhere, everything depressed their minds to such extend that they were loosing clear thinking and their feet sinking in mud could not serve them. Finally because of the dense air the light in the lantern sputtered out and the matches didn’t burn… The courageous adventures hardly ever bending crawled out of the gloomy and stuffy corridors of the underground through the same door.

     They discovered that they were stewed in the underground about an hour. It was possible to conclude given their journey in the meandering corridors they had passed only several sagenes of the fortress; satisfied with that experience only they deduced the reality of existence of the ancient link of the fortress through the dug under the water pass.”

     Perhaps a journalist embellished the story of the brave researchers. The special machines are required inn order to dig out a tunnel under the river bed, which allow to chop and to reinforce the corridor in the chalk-stone as well as the system of obligatory ventilation that avoids smothering under the ground. The ground water would also disturb these kind of works. Let’s note merely that the adventures penetrated into the underground pass from the fortress tower.

     In the 70s of the XIX century commoner Ananyev informed that when he was a child he penetrated together with his father into the recesses of Old Ladoga fortress. The walls and the vaults of the underground pass, which according to Anayev were leading to the Volhov along the southern fortress wall were covered with flags. Numerous of bats were flying around in the light of a lantern touching with their wings the faces of the intruders penetrated to their estate. The local rumors insistently claimed that this pass ran under the river and it is possible to reach another bank of the Volhov next to the white cross near the grange Zagvozya, 8 versts away from the fortress through it.

     The towers of the fortress are cleaned from the rubbish and stones now but neither of them kept any passes to the underground. However, Brandebburg, who’s expedition either did not find any hiding-places in his book “Old Ladoga” wrote: “…the existence of hiding-places was noted several times even in the serious literature…”The historian Kostomarov did not doubt about the realistic presence of the hidden passes under Old Ladoga fortress: “There were secret passes in the walls leading to the underground. It’s unknown to which extend these passes stretch and to which direction the rumors lead them under the Volhov”. It’s worth to say that the assuredness of Kostomarov is based on the legends and assumptions.

     A historian V. Prokhorov (The Christian antiquities and archeology”, 1871) wrote: “…one thing is true for sure: there are hiding-places and the passes there but currently they are dammed!”

     Where did the passes to the secret mazes disappear? Why they were not found in the freed from rubbish fortress towers?

     The existence of the secret corridors is a feature of the ancient Russian fortresses. The corridors led to the underground where used during the siege to shelter children and women. There as well they hid sacraments, valuables, chronicles and later the books. Besides the hidden corridors helped carrying out a sally and living the doomed fortress.

     Old Ladoga fortress was restored several times. During the restorations the old passes were either engulfed as useless or their old vaults cracked down. Today we may see on the cape at the influx of the Ladozhka to the Volhov a replica of the ancient fortress quite different from the original of the XVII century, especially from the early fortifications of mediaeval Ladoga. In the XIX century the passes probably remained in the ruin, through which it was possible to get to the catacomb.

     I would risk expressing my own non-scientific opinion. If the mediaeval people were unable to dig out the tunnel under the Volhov, why not admit that the nature itself did it? There are ramiform mazes of caves, to which our ancestors knowing about their existence could tunnel the conduits.

     Undoubtedly, there are cavities near the fortress walls and in Ground Town. As Syakov wrote in his book “the Mysteries of Old Laadoga” in 90s a group of the engineers from St. Petersburg with a special device capable to discover hollow spaces in the masonry explored the areas near the fortress walls and Ground Town as well as at the counter bank of Volhov. The instrument has identified the hollows.

     It’s exiting to believe in the mysteries of the catacombs. If someone is so lucky he will discover like did Shliman with Troy an absolute wonder of the world, the tunnel under the Volhov created by our ancestors.