Nevyansk: Mysteries, riddles, legends

Nevyansk: Mysteries, riddles, legends

Many residents of the Sverdlovsk region heard about Nevyansk as one of the oldest (founded in 1701) cities of the Urals. It is known for the revived Savior-Priobrazhensky Cathedral, metallurgical plant and the house of the Nevyansk Icon. Since the history of the city has more than three hundred years, around it hovers a huge number of legends and legends put together by the inhabitants to explain a lot of mysterious events occurring in the era of Peter I, Akinfiy and Nikita Demidov. I'm going to tell you the most interesting of them, some of them are fiction, some of them are true, and some of them remain a mystery to this day.

The main attraction of the city is the Nevyansk leaning tower, it is surrounded by legends, she saw and heard a lot. In her and around her unfolded dramatic, if not tragic events. She is well aware of them, but is silent and only occasionally vaguely and mysteriously hints. Now, let’s take a trip through the rabbit hole, plunge into a world of mysteries and mysteries at the regional level.

Architect

One of the main open questions is the identity of the architect - the author of the tower project, there are a lot of shaky hypotheses and legendary rumors, but there is no specific answer.

(a) From the simple analogy that the leaning tower in Pisa was built by Italian masters, follows the Legend of the Italians, whom Akinfiy Demidov allegedly wrote “from abroad”.
Academician I. Gmelin, who visited the Nevyansk factory in 1742, writes about the “local builders”, reproaching them for the slope of the tower and calling them, therefore, not “the best”. The reproach may not be entirely fair. Modern specialists admire the strength and beauty, even the grace of the masonry of the tower. During its construction, the local builders used completely original engineering solutions.
c) There are several hypotheses about the architect of the Nevyansk tower, but they require verification, and therefore it is too early to talk about them. In the meantime, we have to be content with legendary rumors that after the construction of the tower, the architect and builders were secretly taken to the Kolyvan plant, shackled and rotted in the mines.

System of underground passages

Under the tower, in strict secrecy, there are dungeons connected by a secret passage with the owner's yard. “And from the tower dungeon dug a secret hole to the pond, blocked by a lock bar. If you open the jumper, the water will pour directly into the dungeon.” Also, the moves led to other structures: “Bronze” production, doms and “coal cellars”. The presence of underground passages is confirmed by the testimony of contemporaries who participated in the construction, as well as participants in the reconstruction of the plant in the twenties of the XX century. But their purpose remains a mystery.

Fake money

In the dungeons of the tower, Demidov secretly minted gold and silver coins, which were better in quality than those made by the state mint. When rumors about this reached St. Petersburg, an inspector was sent to the Nevyansky plant. Demidov was warned about this, and he gave the order to open the secret locks. Water poured into the dungeons, filled them and flooded smelting furnaces, equipment for coinage, as well as craftsmen that were chained to the walls of the dungeons. The legend has neither been refuted nor confirmed and remains an open question at the moment, although many doubt its veracity, since the Demidovs were very wealthy factory owners, and it simply did not make sense to risk their fate and life by making fakes.

Skeletons in the closet

In the thickness of the massive walls of the Nevyansk tower there are caches, mysterious voids in which the Demidovs walled up alive, possibly numerous secret passages that they did not like. Seismoacoustic introscopy was carried out, which proved that in the tower, except for ventilation and chimney, there are no other holes and cavities.

Why did the tower lean?

There are many versions of why the tower acquired the tilt that made it so famous. From the most fabulous, for example, one of the folk legends says: The tower shook because of the huge number of atrocities committed by the Demidovs, and it will collapse when the descendants of the Demidovs justify the biblical saying: “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” There is a version that the tower was built inclined at the capricious desire of Demidov. In fact, the cause of the tilt was poorly understood geophysical conditions of the construction site. Mixed different types of soil, including watered, as the tower stands on the shore of the pond, and water, as you know, the main enemy of building structures. The builders could not know all these factors, therefore, even during the construction of the first four, the soils began to unevenly shrink and the tower began to gradually tilt. The builders brilliantly coped with the difficulties that appeared during the construction of the tower, it was built so firmly that, despite the extremely unfavorable conditions in which it is located, it is not going to collapse.

Disappearance of the archive

Over Akinfiy Demidov in the last years of his life hangs the threat of exposure of secret cases. The documents were systematically hidden from the auditors. During one of the fires in the XVIII century, the Nevyansk Archive mysteriously disappeared, all, and he was in two buildings that were not affected by the fire. There is an opinion that the fire was arranged on the instructions of the Demidovs themselves, in order to distract attention from the removal of documentation. There is no evidence and refutation, as there is no archive that could shed light on many controversial issues regarding breeders.

chimes

Interesting information is also about the chimes of English production, installed on the Nevyansk tower. It is known that chimes are more expensive than the tower itself by 793 rubles 40 kopecks, chimes are able to play twenty different classical melodies. But these are all statistics, we are interested in legends. In the story “Old Tower” A.N. Tolstoy mentions one of them: “In one terrible year for Russia, just during the feast a strong wind blew from the lake, and everyone heard how often and loudly the clock rang.” The prince, who was just about to sit down to throw out an unprecedented knee, stopped. He shook his head and fell on his face, dead. The lake roared through the dam black waves. At this hour, the plague came to the factory and mowed people down, and the clock rang all night. The people perished, all the owners died, others here, others in the capitals, where even in the royal palaces there was no fear of black death. The factory has gone into custody. Since then, the clock has been abandoned, afraid even to drive up to the tower, and, strangely, before misfortune, every time the clock bell rings, exactly three times. That is the tradition.

Archival search of recent years has revealed some secrets of the Nevyansk tower, but not all. The Nevyansk Tower is waiting for new research, new search, which will open new pages of Ural history.