The Neglinnaya flows from near the Savyolovsky Railway Station in the
north of the city under the city center and into the Moskva River.
Covered in the early 19th century, this tributary now passes invisibly
down Neglinnaya Ulitsa, past the Bolshoi Theater and under Red Square
and Alexandrovsky Sad before emptying into the Moskva.
Our tour starts at the Tsvetnoi Bulvar metro station, where we meet
up with Ivan, a young Muscovite in a baseball cap and System of a Down
T-shirt. After a quick briefing, he leads us off in what appears to be
the wrong direction. Wondering where we will descend into the tunnels,
we cross the Garden Ring and enter a large park.
Our gateway to
the underworld turns out to be an innocuous drain cover beside a
flowerbed in front of a statue. Ivan hands out rubber waders, torches
and gloves, and explains that we are about to descend into an old part
of the city’s drainage system. “Watch out for falling debris and step
aside as soon as you reach the bottom,” he warns.
Five minutes later we are standing almost waist-deep in fast-flowing
water in a narrow, arched brick tunnel. Since this is not a sewer, there
is no smell as such, beyond the slight odor of damp walls, stone and
dirty rainwater. The murmur of traffic is faintly audible.
The six
of us move along the dark passage in single file, the sound of rushing
water a constant accompaniment. Every now and again a loud metallic
percussion reverberates around the dank space – this means a car on the
road above has just driven over a manhole cover.
At one point Ivan
reaches out and picks something off the wall. He shines his torch down
on his hand, where a large coppery cockroach is sitting on his finger.
“There
are four types of animals to be found in the Neglinnaya,” he says,
“Rats, cockroaches, fish and spiders.” Former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov,
explains Ivan, claimed to have discovered giant white cockroaches in
the Neglinnaya tunnel during reconstruction work at the Bolshoi Theater
in 2010. Luzhkov described “large cockroaches” of up to 10 centimeters
in length that “we couldn’t even imagine.” He insisted that the insects
were white “because it’s dark there, and they don’t want humans to touch
them.” Ivan, however, says there is no evidence to suggest these
creatures exist.