Sukharev Tower in the Kremlin. The secret of the Sukharev tower

The most mysterious building in Moscow, the old Sukharevskaya Tower was built in 1692. It was said that Peter I erected a tower in honor of the colonel of the Streltsy army Lavrenty Sukharev, who proved his loyalty to the tsar during the Streltsy rebellion of 1689. However, Sukharev is far from the first on the list. And the name "Sukharev" seems to be due to the fact that it was the Sukharevsky regiment that guarded the Sretensky Gates. The tower became the successor to the system of defensive structures in Moscow, called Skorodom in connection with the speed of their construction - the front city gates with guardhouses and a high superstructure in the manner of the Dutch town halls. From April 1700, the tower passed into the possession of the School of Navigation, and the history of the school is closely connected with the name of Bruce, who was called in the capital only Bruce the Sorcerer. Popular rumor quickly dubbed him a sorcerer and warlock. The amazing achievements of Jacob Bruce in astrology, medicine, chemistry and mechanics did not fit in the minds of ordinary people of that time. From here came the legends about the "sorcerer" who predicted fate by the stars, revived corpses, turned lead into gold, and living people into flying iron dragons. There were legends that Jacob Bruce allegedly owned the magical “black book” of King Solomon, a book that revealed to him all the secrets, with the help of which he could find out what was in any place in the earth, could tell who had what where hidden ... It was believed that this book could not be obtained: it is not given to anyone and is located in a mysterious room in the Sukharev Tower, where no one dared to enter. When Bruce died in 1735, Catherine I personally rummaged through the observatory on the tower and the count's scientific archive, which was stored at the Academy of Sciences. So, did she have reason to believe in the existence of a mysterious book? .. The search was in vain, and the Empress ordered the tower to be sealed and a guard to be put up, which was removed only in 1924! Almost two centuries have passed, Russia experienced wars, revolutions, the collapse of tsarist power - and the guard was still standing!

Then, on the orders of Stalin (prone to mysticism, like all tyrants), the search for the book was resumed. The tower was dismantled literally brick by brick and all the contents were taken personally to him. But the mysterious tome was never found. The angry leader ordered to blow up the remains of the structure. They say that it was from that time on Sukharevka that they began to meet a tall, thin man in ancient clothes, sullenly shaking his finger at someone ...

Copy-paste from the Internet. From myself I will only add that the tower was indeed not demolished, namely, it was dismantled brick by brick on the orders of Stalin, allegedly because it interfered with the construction of the road.
Who cares - she was opposite the Sklif on Bolshaya Sukharevskaya Square. I didn’t see people in ancient clothes there, but it’s quite nice to take a walk in the evening)

edited news Mrs. Pan - 10-12-2010, 06:02

In order to widen the streets in order to increase the capacity in Moscow, not only pretty streets with trams or city boulevards were destroyed - sometimes amazing architectural objects were destroyed for these purposes. One of the most egregious cases - Sukharev Tower

Sretenka. This is the place today

The tower was built in 1701 on the initiative of Peter I. The fortifications of the Earthen City had already lost their defensive significance by that time, so the architecture of the Sukharev Tower was devoid of any fortifications. The facades had a clear division into floors, the walls of the third tier were cut through by a continuous ribbon of large paired windows with elegant architraves, a wide open staircase led to the mound that went around the second and third tiers of the building. The main three-story volume ended with a high tower with a clock and the state emblem at the top. The solemn architecture of the Sukharev Tower created the image of a monumental public building ()

From 1700 to 1715, the famous mathematical and navigational school worked in the tower. The school became the first higher specialized educational institution in Russia and the first naval school, the progenitor of the St. Petersburg Maritime Academy

Then for a long time the Sukharev Tower was under the jurisdiction of the Moscow office of the Admiralty Board. The warehouses of the Baltic Fleet and the Arkhangelsk port were located here. In 1829, a reservoir of the Mytishchi water pipeline was built from cast-iron plates in the Sukharev Tower, which could hold 7,000 buckets of water. So the tower became a water tower. In 1854, the volume of the reservoir was increased. From the middle of the 19th century until the 1920s, at the foot of the tower, on weekends, the Sukharevskaya flea market, known throughout Moscow, unfolded trade.

In the 1870s, the tower was restored, the work was supervised by the architect A.L. Ober. Since 1925, the Moscow Communal Museum, which was the predecessor of the Museum of the History of Moscow (), was located in the Sukharev Tower.

A few quotes about the tower:

"Fantastic community"

“... on a steep mountain, strewn with low houses, among which only occasionally a wide white wall of some boyar house peeps through, rises a quadrangular, gray-gray, fantastic bulk - the Sukharev Tower. She proudly looks out at the surroundings, as if she knows that the name of Peter is inscribed on her mossy brow! Her gloomy physiognomy, her gigantic size, her decisive forms - everything keeps the imprint of another century, the imprint of that formidable power that nothing could resist.

M.Yu. Lermontov, Panorama of Moscow, 1834

"Sukharevsky hours"

“Sukharev's watch began to fool around. According to a report made to the Council by one of the city engineers, the Sukharev clock either does not strike at all, or strikes incorrectly. The government has recently made an order to repair the clock.”

"How to get?"

“On January 18, Eskov, passing through the Catherine Park, was stopped by two women; one of them asked how to get to the Butyrskaya outpost, and the other asked me to show her the way to the Sukharev Tower. Eskov showed them the way and both women left, after which Eskov discovered that a silver cigarette case had disappeared from his pocket, as well as a watch and a purse with 170 rubles.

In 1931, a plan was developed for the general reconstruction of Moscow. The plan was to change the city completely: Moscow was to become the center of the world proletarian revolution. In the center of the city, wide highways and high-rise buildings were to appear, in order to do this, they began to demolish historical buildings.

In 1933, it came to the Sukharev Tower: according to Stalin, the three-hundred-year-old tower interfered with the development of traffic on Sukharevskaya Square and therefore it was necessary to demolish it. A small note with information about this insignificant news was published in the newspaper Rabochaya Moskva (I tried to find a scan, but failed).

Famous architects tried to protect the tower: the painter and restorer Igor Grabar, academicians of architecture Ivan Fomin and Ivan Zholtovsky wrote a letter to Stalin stating that the decision was wrong:

“The Sukharev Tower,” they wrote, “is an unfading example of the great building art, known to the whole world and equally highly valued everywhere. Despite all the latest advances in technology, it still has not lost its enormous indicative and educational value for construction personnel. “We ... strongly object to the destruction of a highly talented work of art, tantamount to the destruction of a Raphael painting. In this case, it is not about the destruction of the odious monument of the era of feudalism, but about the death of the creative thought of the great master.

The letter contained more than just a request. Its authors proposed to develop a project for the reconstruction of Sretenskaya Square within a month, which would allow solving the transport problem while preserving the Sukharev Tower. In particular, it was proposed to cut through six arches in the lower part of the tower, through which to lay tram tracks and direct traffic and pedestrian flows. Along with the letter, an approximate schedule for the movement of vehicles in this area was also sent.

Stalin's answer to this was:

photo from the museum in Sochi

“We studied the issue of the Sukharev Tower and came to the conclusion that it must be demolished. We propose to demolish the Sukharev tower and expand the movement. Architects who object to demolition are blind and hopeless.”

The tower has been demolished

The architects made another attempt to save the object. A letter signed by six architects and artists was sent to Stalin

“Suddenly (after the issue seemed to be settled) they began to destroy the Sukharev tower. The spire has already been removed; they are already knocking down the balustrades of the outer stairs. The significance of this monument, the rarest example of Petrine architecture, a magnificent landmark of historical Moscow, is undeniable and enormous. They are demolishing it for the sake of streamlining traffic... We urgently ask you to urgently intervene in this matter, stop the destruction of the Tower and offer to convene a meeting of architects, artists and art critics right away in order to consider other options for redevelopment of this section of Moscow that will satisfy the needs of the growing traffic, but also save a wonderful architectural monument "

The answer was clear

“I received a letter with a proposal not to destroy the Sukharev Tower.

The decision to destroy the tower was made at the time by the Government. Personally, I consider this decision the right one, believing that the Soviet people will be able to create more majestic and memorable examples of architectural creativity than the Sukharev Tower, it is a pity that, despite all my respect for you, I have no opportunity to render you a service in this case.

Respectful to you (I. Stalin) "

The newspapers of that time wrote detailed chronicles of the disassembly

- April 19, 1934 - the top 6 meters of the Sukharev tower have already been dismantled. The dismantling of the main granite staircase has also been completed.

- April 29, 1934 - yesterday the analysis of the prism (upper part) of the Sukharev Tower ended. The demolition of the main building began.

- May 24, 1934 - the dismantling of the Sukharev tower ends. The work plan has been completed by more than 80%.

An eyewitness to the events was the famous journalist and Moscow historian Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovsky, who wrote in a letter to his daughter:

"She's being broken. First of all, they took off her clock and use it for some other tower, and then they broke off the porch, knocked down the spire, dismantled the upper floors brick by brick, and not today or tomorrow they will break her slender pink figure. Still pink as she was! Yesterday was a sunny evening, a bright sunset from the side of the Triumphal Gate gilded the Sadovaya from below and scattered in the dying remains with a glow.

He added these words to his poems:

“Something terrible! Crimson, red,

Illuminated by the sun's rays,

Turned into a heap of ruins of the living,

I still see her yesterday -

Proud beauty, pink tower ... "

After the destruction of the square, Sukharevskaya Square was renamed Kolkhoznaya

Such are the things. The area was then renamed back in 1990, like the metro. In 1982, they even decided to restore the tower, but not a single one was accepted at the design competition. Trams from Sretenka also soon disappeared, replaced by trolleybuses. Now there is a senseless and merciless 16-lane Garden Ring

Old Moscow. Sukharev tower.

The Sukharev Tower is an outstanding monument of Russian civil architecture, which, in terms of its architectural value, stood on a par with the Kremlin, its cathedrals, and St. Basil's temples, the tower was a symbol of Moscow from 1695 to 1934, it towered at the intersection of the Garden Ring, Sretenka and 1st Meshchanskaya Street (now Mira Avenue).

"... On a steep mountain, strewn with low houses, among which the wide white wall of some boyar house occasionally peeps through, rises a quadrangular, gray, fantastic bulk - the Sukharev Tower. She proudly looks at the surroundings, as if she knows that the name of Peter is inscribed on her mossy brow! Her gloomy physiognomy, her gigantic size, her decisive forms - everything keeps the imprint of another century, the imprint of that formidable power, which nothing could resist" M.Yu. Lermontov, Panorama of Moscow, 1834

The tower was built in 1692-1695 on the site of the old wooden Sretensky Gates of the Earthen City, on the initiative of Peter the Great and designed by M. I. Choglokov. It got its name in honor of Lavrenty Sukharev, whose streltsy regiment at the end of the 17th century guarded the Sretensky Gates.
In 1689, Peter I fled from his sister Princess Sophia to the Sergius Lavra, Sukharev's regiment came to the defense of Peter. In gratitude, the king ordered to build a new stone gate with a clock on the site of the old gate.

The architectural style of the Sukharev Tower was a symbiosis of Lombard and Gothic. The strength of the tower was colossal, and the main guarantee of this strength was an unusually deep foundation. Several centuries after the construction of the Sukharev Tower, when water pipes were laid at the location of the foundation, the builders could not reach the base of the foundation. The total height of the Sukharevskaya tower was 60 meters!
During the time of Peter I, the three tallest buildings in Moscow were Ivan the Great, Sukharev and Menshikov Towers, about which Muscovites used to say: "Sukhareva Tower is the bride of Ivan the Great, and Menshikova is his sister."

In 1698-1701, the tower was reconstructed and acquired the form in which it survived until the beginning of the twentieth century. The main element of the building was a tent, thanks to which the tower resembled a Western European Gothic town hall.

On the territory of the Sukharev Tower, Peter set up a library and an astronomical observatory, as well as navigational and mathematical schools, in which people taught not only from abroad, but also Leonty Magnitsky, who wrote the first arithmetic textbook in the history of Russia. Also in the tower there was an astronomical clock, and in the lower tier - a large copper globe (more than 2 meters in diameter), donated to the father of Tsar Peter by the authorities of Holland

It was the first higher secular special educational institution in Russia. It was it that gave the country the first, navigators, engineers, architects and surveyors.
Representatives of various classes studied there.

Many legends have been associated with the Sukharev Tower. One of them arose as a result of the analysis of the tower. Moscow legend says that Stalin decided to destroy the Sukharev Tower in order to find some kind of treasure. Therefore, the tower was dismantled very carefully, brick by brick.

But still, let's return to the realities of that time and move on from legends to history and facts.

After the war of 1812, as soon as its inhabitants began to return to Moscow and began to search for their looted property, Governor-General Rostopchin issued an order in which he announced that "all things, wherever they come from, are the inalienable property of the one who currently owns them, and that any owner can sell them, but only once a week, on Sunday, in only one place, namely on the square opposite the Sukharev Tower." And on the very first Sunday, mountains of looted property dammed up a huge square, and Moscow poured into an unprecedented market.

In 1829, a reservoir of the Mytishchi water pipeline was built from cast-iron plates in the Sukharev Tower, which could hold 7,000 buckets of water. So the tower became a water tower. At various times, the tower housed a water tank for the city, and warehouses, and bureaucratic offices, and apartments for employees, and shops, and even a chapel with cells for monks.
In the 1870s, the tower was restored under the guidance of the architect A. L. Ober. Repairs were made in 1897-1899. Repairs began in 1914. Stopped due to the beginning of the 1st World War. In 1919, the architect Z.I. Ivanov was engaged in the repair of the Sukharevskaya Tower, he also drew up a project for its restructuring into a museum. In 1926, the Moscow Communal Museum was opened in the Sukharev Tower.

In March 1934, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks agreed with the proposal of the Moscow Party Committee to demolish the Sukharevskaya Tower and the wall of Kitai-Gorod, and soon work began on the demolition of the tower.

On April 17, Honored Art Worker K. F. Yuon, Academician A. V. Shchusev, A. M. Efros, the authors of the first letter I. Grabar, I. Zholtovsky, I. Fomin and others addressed Stalin with a collective letter. They wrote: “The Sukharev Tower,” they wrote, “is an unfading example of the great building art, known to the whole world and equally highly valued everywhere. Despite all the latest advances in technology, it still has not lost its enormous indicative and educational value for construction personnel. “We ... strongly object to the destruction of a highly talented work of art, tantamount to the destruction of a Raphael painting. In this case, it is not about the destruction of the odious monument of the era of feudalism, but about the death of the creative thought of the great master.

The answer was not long in coming. "I received a letter with a proposal - not to destroy the Sukharev Tower.
The decision to destroy the tower was made at the time by the Government. Personally, I consider this decision the right one, believing that the Soviet people will be able to create more majestic and memorable examples of architectural creativity than the Sukharev Tower, it is a pity that, despite all my respect for you, I have no opportunity to render you a service in this case.
Respectful to you (I. Stalin)

The attitude of Muscovites to the destruction of the tower is most clearly reflected in the poems of Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovsky:
Something terrible! Crimson, red,
Illuminated by the sunset beam,
Turned into a heap of living ruins,
I still see her yesterday -
Proud beauty, pink tower...

Nevertheless, the parameters of the tower were recorded in the measured drawings, and some especially valuable fragments of the decor were preserved. One of the window frames on the third floor was transferred to the Donskoy Monastery, where it was walled into the monastery wall.

Guide to Architectural Styles

The tower was given a name in honor of Lavrenty Sukharev: his archery regiment at the end of the 17th century guarded the Sretensky Gate. And when in 1689 Peter fled from his sister Sophia to the Sergius Lavra, Sukharev's regiment came to the defense of the future emperor. In gratitude, he ordered the construction of a new stone gate with a clock. They say that they even had a thank you plaque to Lavrenty Sukharev. But that's just an urban legend.

Later, the building of this gate housed the "Mathematical and Navigational School" - the first higher technical educational institution in Russia. They trained navigators, engineers and surveyors. The listeners lived in the tower. But since it was not suitable for permanent residence, the school was transferred to St. Petersburg. Only the laboratory of the astronomer, astrologer and mathematician Yakov Bruce remained in the Sukharev Tower. And the Moscow office of the Admiralty Board moved into the vacated premises.

In 1829, water tanks appeared on the second floor of the tower. So the Sukharev tower became a water tower. A water-folding fountain appeared on Sukharevskaya Square. It operated until the launch of the Krestovsky water towers in 1890.

In the 1870s, A.L. Ober restored the Sukharev Tower. And already in 1914, a new restoration began, but it had to be suspended due to the First World War. Then the Sukharev Tower housed the Moscow Communal Museum, the future Museum of Moscow.

Despite the protests of architects and historians, the Sukharev Tower was dismantled during the reconstruction of the square in 1934. The work was carried out with the direct participation of Stalin.

On August 28, 1933, after the publication of preparations for the dismantling of the tower by I.E. Grabar, I.A. Fomin and I.V. Zholtovsky sent a letter to Stalin pointing out the fallacy of this decision. But on September 18, Stalin and Voroshilov sent a telegram to Kaganovich from Sochi. They pointed out that the tower needed to be demolished in order to expand the movement, and that the architects who opposed this were blind and unpromising.

Work began on the demolition of the tower, and on April 17, K.F. Yuon, A.V. Shchusev, A.M. Efros, I. Grabar, I. Zholtovsky, I. Fomin.

Unexpectedly (after the issue seemed to have been settled) they began to destroy the Sukharev tower. The spire has already been removed; they are already knocking down the balustrades of the outer stairs. The significance of this monument, the rarest example of Petrine architecture, a magnificent landmark of historical Moscow, is undeniable and enormous. It is being demolished for the sake of streamlining traffic... We urgently ask you to urgently intervene in this matter, stop the destruction of the Tower and offer to convene a meeting of architects, artists and art critics right now to consider other options for redevelopment of this section of Moscow, which will satisfy the needs of the growing traffic, but also save a wonderful architectural monument.

She is broken. First of all, they took off her clock and use it for some other tower, and then they broke off the porch, knocked down the spire, dismantled the upper floors brick by brick, and not today or tomorrow they will break her slender pink figure. Still pink as she was! Yesterday was a sunny evening, a bright sunset from the side of the Triumphal Gate gilded the Sadovaya from below and scattered in the dying remains like a glow.
Something terrible! Crimson, red,
Illuminated by the sunset beam,
Turned into a heap of living ruins,
I still see her yesterday -
Proud beauty, pink tower...

One of the architraves of the windows on the third floor of the Sukharev Tower was preserved and transferred to the Donskoy Monastery. There he was walled into the monastery wall. And the clock of 1899 is installed on the tower of the Front Gate in Kolomenskoye. The foundations of the tower are also preserved, but hidden under the square.

In 1982, the Moscow Executive Committee decided to restore the Sukharev Tower. A competition of projects was announced, but none was accepted.

They say that...... the architects of the Sukharev Tower were Franz Lefort and Peter himself, who sought to give it the shape of a ship. Scientists even found a town hall in some German town, from which they allegedly copied the tower.
... in the Sukharev tower, Bruce created a study. There he kept books from the library, which he collected all his life. According to legend, Bruce had the "magic book" of King Solomon. It allowed to predict the future and destinies of people. The Book of Solomon was spellbound, and no one but Bruce could pick it up. It was kept in the secret room of the tower. Only Bruce knew the entrance.
He also had the Black Book. It was written by Lucifer himself. According to legend, she gave the owner power over the world. There was a real hunt for the book!
After the death of Bruce, Catherine II forced the walls to be dismantled in part of the rooms of the Sukharev Tower, but the book of Lucifer was not found. The next attempt was made by Stalin. He ordered the tower to be dismantled brick by brick. Lazar Kaganovich personally observed the work, and the cars leaving the facility and people leaving were searched by the NKVD officers. The black book was never found. An enraged Stalin ordered to blow up the remains of the tower, and during the explosion a flock of bats flew out of the ground. People saw this as a bad sign. Then the repressions and the war began.
Today, treasure hunters are exploring the underground passages under Sukharevskaya Square in search of the treasured book. To no avail. Only sometimes it becomes known about the mysterious disappearance of people or about the appearance of ghosts.
But in fact, Bruce's library with books on astronomy is located in the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.
... Bruce died unusually - during the experiments. The sorcerer told the servant to cut himself into pieces, and then pour the elixir of eternal youth over him. During the experiment, Bruce's wife broke into the laboratory, killed the servant and stole the elixir. And the restless spirit of the murdered man, along with the magic book, moved to the Sukharev Tower. Bruce's body was already resting in a crypt near the Church of St. Michael in the German Quarter, and the lights were on every night in the observatory of the Sukharev Tower.
Bruce's grave was destroyed during the reconstruction of old Moscow. When the church on Radio Street was dismantled in the 1930s, a coffin with the count's body was found in the crypt. He was identified by his family ring. The remains of the sorcerer were transferred to the laboratory of the anthropologist and sculptor Gerasimov, but they mysteriously disappeared - only Bruce's ring, caftan and camisole remained. The clothes are now stored in the funds of the State Historical Museum, the ring has been lost.
... in 1812, the day before the Napoleonic troops entered Moscow, a hawk with fetters on its paws got entangled in the wings of a two-headed copper eagle on the Sukharev Tower. The hawk fought for a long time and died. Muscovites saw this as a sign of a future victory over Napoleon.

Once upon a time, Streltsy settlements stretched along Zemlyanoy Val, where the city security guards were quartered. In the 17th century, the Sukharev Regiment was located near the Sretensky Gate, named after its colonel Lavrenty Sukharev. It was on that spot that the tower, called Sukharevskaya, was built. The height of the tower was over 60 meters.

Yakov Vilimovich Bruce, a Moscow sorcerer, is a figure no less mysterious and enigmatic than the French soothsayer Michel Nostradamus. A Scot in the service of the Russian tsars, he predicted fate by the stars, put the hopelessly ill on their feet and, they say, created the elixir of eternal youth. He was an engineer, mathematician, astronomer, healer, topographer, military man, politician, diplomat. And even a sorcerer - his contemporaries were sure. Including Tsar Peter.

At the age of 16, Bruce signed up for the amusing troops that Peter the Great then created. The young sovereign, greedily eager for knowledge, immediately singled out the enlightened Scot among the rest. Which, moreover, was not inferior to "Herr Peter" in drunkenness and revelry. Peter loved the Scot and forgave him the barbs in his address and in the address of the Orthodox Church.

Bruce accompanies Peter on his trip to Europe. In 1698, Peter, having received news of the rebellion of the archers in Moscow, hurries to his homeland. Together with him, Bruce returns to Russia. In fact, Freemasonry was brought to Russia, after these expeditions of Peter I to England, in which he was accompanied by Bruce. It is believed that the founders of Freemasonry in Russia are Peter I and his associates - Patrick Gordon, Franz Lefort and, as we already know, Jacob Bruce.

Immediately after the arrival of the Great Embassy of 1697-1698 in Russia, Bruce proposed to the tsar, inspired after visiting Europe, to design and build the first secular educational institution in Moscow, the school of mathematical and navigational sciences. Among other things, this building was to serve as the headquarters of the first Masonic lodge in Russia, established by Peter shortly after his return from England, the so-called "Neptune Society". This building, known as the Sukharev Tower, was located in Moscow at the intersection of the Garden Ring, Sretenka and 1st Meshchanskaya Street (now Prospekt Mira).

The “Neptune Society”, the secret royal council and the first Russian Masonic lodge, whose members were fond of magic, sorcery and astrology, and which, in addition to Peter I, included his entourage, the first persons of the state, gathered at the Sukharev Tower at night. Among them were Menshikov, Sheremetiev, Golitsyn, Lefort, Apraksin and, of course, Bruce. The people whispered that the king, having surrounded himself with foreigners, was now doing “blameful” and “impious” deeds with them in the tower, communicating with Satan and practicing witchcraft.

In 1701, Peter I opened the Navigation School in the Sukharev Tower, and Bruce, who was the closest associate of the Tsar, opened the first scientific center in Russia at this school. Regular astronomical observations were carried out in the tower, various physical and chemical experiments were carried out, maps were drawn, foreign ones were translated, and textbooks and manuals were written. But, people said that Bruce does terrible things in the tower, and bypassed it.

On the top floor, Bruce set up an observatory. The window of the observatory, which glows every night, quickly assured the Muscovites that things were not clean here. Candle trader Alexei Morozov, for example, claimed that he himself saw iron birds flying out of the windows of an astronomer at dusk. And soon an alarming rumor spread around the city - a Lutheran from the Sukharev Tower communicates with evil spirits and with its help turns living people, whose groans spread around the neighborhood, into flying iron dragons.

There is some truth in this story, - says Zinaida Tatarskaya, Doctor of Historical Sciences. - In the Sukharev Tower, Yakov Bruce worked on the creation of lethal machines. The surviving drawings really resemble the drawings of modern aircraft. These papers are now in the Russian Academy of Sciences. Unfortunately, some of the valuable documents disappeared without a trace in the thirties. According to one version, German spies stole them and then, according to Bruce's drawings, the Nazis made their invincible Messerschmit fighters.

According to legend, the Solomon Seal was kept in the Sukharevskaya Tower on a ring with the words SATOR, AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS. “You can do different things with this ring: you will turn it into yourself with a seal, you will be invisible, you will destroy all charms from yourself, you will receive power over Satan ...”.

But the biggest secret of the warlock from Sukharevka, perhaps, remains his magical Black Book. Many legends circulated around this mysterious object. The people said that this book was written by Satan himself, and called it none other than the "Devil's Bible", if someone other than the warlock to whom it belongs opens it, he will be damned forever. To the warlock, this book gives great power and secret knowledge. There was also a rumor that this book went to Bruce along with the famous and legendary library of Ivan the Terrible, which he safely hid from prying eyes in the dungeons of the Sukharev Tower.

Another legend about the magical "Black Book" tells that it was written with magical signs, belonged to the once wise King Solomon, and the fate of all people on earth is recorded in it. The Book of Solomon was spoken, except for Bruce, no one could pick it up, it simply disappeared. It was kept in the secret room of the tower, the entrance to which only Bruce knew. Peter I wanted to get acquainted with this book, but even in the presence of Bruce himself, it did not fall into the hands of the tsar. Before his death, Bruce walled up the "Black Book" somewhere in the Sukharev Tower, in a secret room on which he placed a special spell, a "magic lock" so that the book and the secret knowledge contained there would not fall into the hands of strangers.

After the death of Bruce, many allegedly tried to find the legendary book, and Catherine II even forced them to dismantle the walls in part of the rooms of the tower. But the book was never found. Bruce scared Muscovites even after his death. His body had already been buried in a crypt near the Lutheran church of St. Michael in the German Quarter, but every night the light was still on in the observatory. Muscovites said that it was the spirit of the sorcerer guarding his magic book.

The next major attempt to find the book was rumored to have been made by Stalin himself. This event took place in 1934, when, by decision of the Soviet government, it was decided to demolish the tower, since it allegedly interfered with traffic. Despite the protests of many architects, demolition began immediately and with unusual haste. The obvious artificiality of the reason for the demolition of this rare monument of the architecture of the Petrine era, and the way the demolition itself took place, caused a lot of gossip. The Sukharev Tower was not blown up, as happened in those days with many other buildings and temples that were demolished, but they were dismantled, literally brick by brick.

Lazar Kaganovich personally observed the dismantling of the tower, and all the cars leaving the facility and all the people leaving were searched by the NKVD officers. The conclusion suggested itself - they were obviously looking for something, something very important. And found. But alas, among the various manuscripts, books, manuscripts, esoteric works that belonged to Bruce, as well as devices and mechanisms, alchemical utensils and drawings, there was no most important thing, the Black Book.

The enraged tyrant gave the order to blow up the remains of the tower. Lazar Kaganovich, who was present at the destruction of the architectural monument, later told Stalin that he saw a tall, thin man in a wig in the crowd, who shook his finger at him, and then disappeared. But some scientific works of Bruce, the leader of all peoples, nevertheless found and used them in the construction of modern Moscow.

You can determine the place where the Sukharev Tower stood from the photographs below. The three-story house on the right has not changed much.

Here is a close-up of the house. It is easy to recognize him by the Stalinist symbols.

And below we see the location of the Sukharev Tower in relation to the Sklifosovsky Hospital (Sheremetyevo Hospital). Right in front of us, the Sukharevsky market, sung by Gilyarovsky, is seething.

And this is how the hospital and the market looked from the top of the Sukharev tower. Before us is the Garden Ring, on the right is Sretenka, on the left is Mira Avenue (they are not visible).

Sklifosovsky's hospital has not changed much since then.