Sometimes you look on the Internet, and in passing you stumble upon amazing information. Over time, you think that you have already seen and heard everything amazing on the Internet, but it turns out that everything is still ahead.
For example, many people do not know about the masterpiece of stone craftsmanship of our ancestors - a giant bathtub, neither the masters of ancient Egypt nor other ancient cultures cared before making such a thing. And why this product is not widely advertised as the technological achievements of our ancestors - I do not understand. The size of the product is so huge that you can hardly believe it. And it is quite possible that this is a legacy from the more ancient, antediluvian inhabitants of this region.
This artifact is also called "Babolovskaya Chalice", "Bath of the Russian Empire", "Granite Masterpiece" and "Eighth Wonder of the World". Meanwhile, you will not find it in any popular guidebook for St. Petersburg and its suburbs.
Let's talk about it in more detail...
In Tsarskoye Selo, on the outskirts of Babolovsky Park, there are the ruins of the Babolovsky Palace. 
In the south-west of the city of Pushkin, far from the tourist routes, is the last of the imperial parks. Compared to Alexandrovsky or Ekaterininsky park, which abound with elegant architectural structures and sculptures, Babolovsky park looks more than modest.
The history of the emergence of the Babolovsky Palace dates back to the 80s of the 18th century, when not far from the village of Babolovo (or another version: a huge territory of almost 270 hectares, got its name from the nearby, but not survived, Finnish village of Pabola), in three versts from Tsarskoye Selo, among swamps and lowlands overgrown with forests, Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin built a manor with a small landscape garden. 
If you look through the wall gap inside the octagonal tower, then your eyes will see a giant granite bowl, a colossal monolithic pool, carved from a single piece of red granite, about two meters high and more than 5 meters in diameter. This is the famous Babolov bowl. 
The stone palace was built in 1785 according to the project of I. Neyelov. Before that, there was a wooden manor in its place. The architect gave the stone building a "Gothic" look: windows with lancet endings, battlements. An octagonal tower with a hipped roof gave the palace a look of Gothic buildings. A large marble bathtub was installed in the main hall for bathing on hot days. Babolovsky Palace was a one-story summer building, consisting of seven rooms, each of which directly overlooked the park. 
Near the palace, called Babolovsky, there is a man-made Big Babolovsky pond. It was made when the nearby Kuzminka River was blocked by a dam. Directly behind the mansion is another pond, Mirror, or Silver. From the palace to the park, the path passes along the Babolovsky bridge-dam. Through the grove, the road led to the kitchen building. It existed until 1941 and was destroyed by enemy shells. A little further you can find an alley of silvery willows, whose age reaches one and a half hundred years.
Initially, only a small area near the palace was cleared, and everywhere around there was a continuous spruce forest. A ditch with clear, very cold water also flowed through a ditch, and huge burbots were found in it. They called it "monk's": allegedly in the grotto from which it flowed, there was a figure of a monk. The expansion of the park began in the middle of the 19th century. Then they began to drain the surrounding swamps, uproot old trees, and plant new young oaks, maples, lindens and birches in their place. They paved roads and cut clearings for walking and carriage rides.
The architect-decorator Rondi was called from Paris, who presented a project for the creation of a public entertainment complex in Babolovsky Park. The new park was supposed to abound with rides, fountains and waterfalls. But, having received a cost estimate, the emperor abandoned the idea. To "save face", it was announced that the place was intended for secluded walks and enjoying the beauty of the surrounding nature. 
In 1783, an English garden was laid out near the palace. On the side of the northern facade of the palace was located the Big (or Babolovsky) pond, formed by the Kuzminka river after the construction of a dam on it, to the south of the palace there is a Mirror (or Silver) pond. The palace experienced a rebirth after the restructuring carried out by V.P. Stasov in 1824-1825. 
Ekaterina's grandson Alexander1 loved this place, and allegedly had intimate dates here. Alexander made a redevelopment of the palace and ordered a giant granite bath instead of white marble. The compositional center of the palace was an oval hall, the size of which was significantly increased by the architect in order to accommodate a new bathtub.
A unique granite monolith pool with a capacity of 8,000 buckets of water was commissioned by engineer Betancourt to the famous St. Petersburg stonemason Samson Sukhanov, known for supervising the manufacture of Rostral columns on the spit of Vasilyevsky Island and taking part in the creation of the pedestal of the monument to Minin and Pozharsky in Moscow. The master agreed to cut down the bathtub for 16,000 rubles. A block of red granite interspersed with greenish labrador, weighing more than 160 tons, was delivered from one of the Finnish islands and polished on the spot for ten years (1818-1828). The bath has unique dimensions: height 196 cm, depth 152 cm, diameter 533 cm, weight 48 tons. It was first installed and then erected around the wall. A cast-iron staircase with railings, equipped with viewing platforms, led to the pool. All parts were cast at C. Byrd's iron foundry. 
In 1818, a granite block weighing more than 160 tons was delivered to Babolovo from one of the Finnish islands. The craftsmen had to cut off everything superfluous (120 tons). The work took 10 years and was completed on time with the highest quality. The result is a polished granite bath: height 196 cm, depth 152 cm, diameter 533 cm, weight 48 tons. Data on a displacement of 8 thousand buckets, according to the calculated data - 12 tons of water.
At the same time, the masters demonstrated an amazing feeling for the stone. The thickness of the walls of the bowl is minimal - 45 cm, which allows it to withstand the pressure of a multi-ton mass of water, but at the same time it is the limit for fragile granite. Art historian, Professor Y. Zembitsky said that “this work of a Russian artist is all the more worthy of attention since nothing so colossal of granite has been known since the time of the Egyptians”
The architect Stasov wrote: “On the occasion of the highest command to make a stone dome, instead of the proposed wooden ceiling over the oval hall, which is being built around the installed granite bath at the Babolovsky pavilion, it became necessary:
1. Thicken the foundations and walls in proportion to the burden and thrust of such a dome and for this.
2. Break the rest of the former hall and some of the adjacent walls of the pavilion with their foundations ... "
The architect completed the work in 1829, retaining the Gothic appearance of the building with lancet windows and crenellated attic. The facades of the palace were plastered, trimmed to look like stone and painted brown.
Historian I. Yakovkin considered this product “one of the first in the world”, and Professor Y. Zembitsky said that “this work of a Russian artist is all the more worthy of attention since nothing so colossal of granite has been known since the time of the Egyptians.”
Before the war, the Babolovsky Palace housed the school of the 100th Aviation Assault Brigade of the Leningrad Military District of Pushkin. At the beginning of the war, she was subjected to severe bombardments.
The unique Babolovsky Palace was damaged during the war. Its stone vaults collapsed. Only one bath, which is almost 200 years old, has been perfectly preserved. During the Second World War, the Germans were going to take it out as a rare exhibit, but they could not. And then they were no longer up to it. 
This object, popularly called Tsar-bath, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records, but has not yet been recognized as a museum exhibit. The authorities treat this unique object carved out of granite as if it were rubbish…
The difference in age between the St. Petersburg and Egyptian masterpieces, of course, is huge. If the sarcophagus in the pyramid of Cheops is at least 5,000 years old, then the granite Tsar Bath is less than 200 years old. But not everything is so simple! The dimensions, weight and technique of processing the bath are surprising. Russian stonemasons did not have to create anything like this either before the manufacture of the Tsar-bath at the end of the 19th century, or after it. Even modern craftsmen with advanced technologies and appropriate equipment for processing granite will find it difficult to fulfill such an order.
It is curious that modern scientists, after a thorough study of the sarcophagus inside the pyramid of Cheops, came to the conclusion that it was not intended for the pharaoh at all. What functions this granite box performed is still unclear, although there are a lot of versions. The same situation develops with the Tsar-bath! It is fraught with no less mysteries than the Egyptian sarcophagus.
Initially, a block of red granite interspersed with green Labrador, from which they were going to cut down a bath, weighed more than 160 tons. After completion of the work, the weight of the finished bath was 48 tons. Even in modern times, this is a large figure, comparable to the weight of a dozen elephants. Not every modern technique is able to lift this load.
Contemporaries are puzzled by the fact that there is no drain hole in the Bath, and there are also no technical possibilities for supplying and heating water. The “hole” at the bottom of the bathtub does not in any way draw on the drain hole and is most likely made relatively recently. 
Today there are two versions explaining the purpose of the Babolov bowl.
The first version is household. By tradition, the Romanov Family spent the summer seasons in Tsarskoe or Peterhof. Monarchs sweat too. On hot days, there was a need to freshen up in cool water. Since the august persons, especially ladies, should not be naked in public, they could do their refreshing in this pool. Why is the pool not made of polypropylene? - Yes, because there were no other materials besides granite then. Why wasn't the water heated? - So because this pool was planned to be used only in the summer and only for cooling.
And the granite bath was such a kind of font with constantly cool or even cold water. Such a thickness of granite absorbs heat for a very long time, we can say that it is a kind of cold accumulator. Here we must remember that the next tsar, Nikolai Pavlovich, was no longer resting in Tsarskoye, but in Peterhof (a cottage in Alexandria) in the summer. And there were many opportunities to swim. Although an interesting pavilion was arranged for the ladies on hot days - Tsaritsyn on Olgin's pond. A different air cooling system was used there.
Most likely, after the completion of the main work, in connection with the death of the Customer (Alexander1), the heirs abandoned the construction of the pool, deciding to demonstrate the bath as an object of stone-cutting art.
The second version is "Masonic". Its supporters consider the Babolovsky palace with a bowl as the future main Masonic temple. At the same time, “specialists” see numerous Masonic signs in the scenery of the palace. This version does not agree well with the fact that in 1822 Alexander I issued the highest rescript "On the destruction of Masonic lodges and all sorts of secret societies." It is hard to believe that Alexander1, destroying the lodges, left one for himself. 
There is also a third version - humorous-cosmic. Someone, Yu. Babikov, writes: “There is no doubt that the bowl itself is an element of an antenna converter-emitter of viton microwave oscillations for ultra-long-range space communications ..”
Version four: according to the original plan, in all likelihood, Vanna was supposed to have a drain. It was planned to supply and drain water by gravity with the appropriate valves (this can be seen from the diagram). But then perhaps they were afraid to drill - it would suddenly crack!
By the way, many wonder how they heated the water? Indeed, to fill such a stone bowl, you need almost 8,000 buckets of water, which is quite a lot, and even if you pour warm water, while the bath is filling, it will already cool down. 
There is an assumption that a fire was made from below and heating the granite, the water was gradually heated. Indeed, there is a niche under the bathroom. Full of garbage, unfortunately, but it is clear that the king of the bath is on 4 granite cubes and there is a small distance from the floor. But it's really a short distance. There will not be enough firewood to heat a bath of water. Moreover, if you look closely, the lower part of the king bath is completely unfinished. There are many places on it that would get soot from kindling and the granite here would be very black, and it would be impossible to clean it. Yes, and the room is small, if you kindle a fire in it, then the whole room will be filled with smoke and it will be very difficult to breathe, not to mention water procedures
The king-bath continues a series of famous, but useless, items. After all, they never fired from the Tsar Cannon, the Tsar Bell never rang, and they never bathed in the Tsar Bath. But if the first two rarities are seen by grateful tourists in the Kremlin, then our royal bath is hidden from human eyes among a pile of garbage in the dark inside of a dilapidated palace. 
Since the fall of 2014, the Babolovsky Palace has been surrounded by a wooden fence, a guardhouse with a guard has been set up inside, and the entrance for visitors and tourists is closed. Categorically! For restoration. 
And some simple questions:
- How "from one of the Finnish islands delivered a granite block weighing more than 160 tons"? Almost 30 km cross-country.
- The work was done, of course, by hand, only a stone, a hammer and a chisel, and, of course, "by eye", although with amazing accuracy. How is this even possible?
- And, finally, the simplest question would seem: why is it so difficult?
Maybe it's not a bath at all, but something else? But we, modern people, due to our stereotyped thinking, are not able to understand. 
Tsarskoye Selo (the city of Pushkin) in summer resembles a southern city. You will not find empty yards here. In each - flower beds, shrubs, trees.
Public gardens, alleys, streets, even squares are buried in greenery. Wide shady boulevards beckon with coolness.
Please note: the dacha of General Pyotr Bagration is hiding behind the trees
How many parks? Aleksandrovsky, Ekaterininsky, Buffer, Separate (Lower). Each of them could decorate any city.
But there is one park about which little is known. Not every Petersburger knows about the existence of this. So I, until I moved from St. Petersburg to Pushkin, did not know anything about Babolovsky Park. Did I meet the name in books about Tsarskoye Selo.
I propose to take a short walk to this little-known park, where we will see the Babolovsky Palace (more precisely, what is left of it) and the Tsar Bath.
Today's story I'll start with a legend. More precisely, from the legend that I heard for the first time about 12 years ago. Later, another one was added - from a TV show. It is interesting that in the literature about Tsarskoye Selo, which is now more than enough, information about Babolovsky Park is very, very scarce. And I found information about the Tsar Bath of the Babolovsky Palace in printed form in a single publication - "An informal guide to the suburbs and suburbs of St. Petersburg."
Legend
Let me emphasize again that this is ONLY a legend. Why will become clear later.
Once upon a time, on the site of a modern park, there was a Menagerie, bordering on Catherine's Park. Ekaterina II presented these lands to Prince Potemkin, who built a palace there for the rest of the highest persons, tired after the hunt.
When Pavel Petrovich had an heir - the future Emperor Alexander I - The Most Serene Prince of Tauride offered the Tsar-bath as a font for the baptism of an infant.
This bowl got its name not by chance. Hewn from a monolithic granite block, this bowl has a height of 5 meters and 6 meters in diameter (according to other sources, 2 and 5, respectively). The total weight of the polished beauty is 50 tons (48 according to another version).
But no matter how different the information, the Tsar-bath is included in the Guinness Book of Records.
The further use of this huge bowl is interesting.
Being a creative person, the prince liked to surprise his guests with both generosity and various surprises. The chambers of the one-story palace were located one after the other in a long luxurious enfilade. And so, when the guests sat down at the tables to eat after the "works of the righteous", the long halls were filled with music.
But there were no musicians!
The entertainer, the owner, came up with a tricky trick: the musicians were located in the Tsar-bath. Behind the high sides they were not visible, and the sound, starting from the walls of the bath, carried through the halls.
According to another legend, Catherine II loved to bask in this bowl, following the example of Cleopatra, taking milk baths ...
But, alas, alas, alas! All these legends have no basis.
"Then why confuse me?" my attentive reader will ask.
I don't confuse. I'm intriguing))) As I said, there is very little information. There is almost nothing left of the palace, and it is problematic to see the Tsar Bath. And the object is very interesting! So I built my story not according to the rules.
The real history of the palace and the park is not so original.
In 1780, by order of Catherine II, a small wooden house was built on the bank of a pond formed with the help of a dam on a small river Kuzminka. And three years later the house was demolished, and in its place a stone building was erected, which had seven rooms and a special round hall for a marble bath.
In 1783-1785. the building was erected. The architect of the project was I.V. Neyelov. The building was built in the English Neo-Gothic style. The red-brick facades with white trim stood out beautifully against the greenery. The asymmetric layout of the palace is interesting.
Photo from http://forum.awd.ru/
Initially, the palace was intended for housing. When Catherine II, whose big heart longed for new love, needed more freedom, she decided to remove Grigory Potemkin to the outskirts of the residence, she granted him the Babolovsky Palace. But, neither the building of the palace, nor the Babolovskaya manor was ever the property of the Prince of Taurida, remaining under the jurisdiction of the Tsarskoye Selo palace department.
Under Alexander I, the palace with the English Garden adjacent to it entered the newly created 7th part of the Tsarskoye Selo Garden. Subsequently, the significantly expanded park began to be called Babolovsky.
Photo from http://forum.awd.ru/
A great lover of cold bathing, Alexander I, installed a huge bathtub made of polished granite in the Babolovsky Palace. Made in 1824 by the artel of Samson Sukhanov, the bath-pool required the restructuring of the round bathing hall. The project, in addition to increasing the size, providing for the installation of a vaulted dome and strengthening the foundations, was carried out by the architect V.P. Stasov. The work was supervised by V.M. Gornostaev.
During the war, both the park and the palace were badly damaged. Many trees were cut down, the park fell into disrepair, the walls of the palace were destroyed. But, if the park was cleared, then time did not spare the palace ruins.
The last photo is not very visible: on the left, along the path, a row of old silvery willows, one of the few reminders of human “man-made”.
Currently, the park is more like a mixed forest. Unless the paths remind of the once “cultural” space, but the alleys near the palace are well-groomed.
The palace, after the war, was gradually destroyed, through the windows one could see the Tsar Bath.
Photos from spbland.ru
Unfortunately, I didn’t have a photo of the time of my acquaintance with this attraction of that time, I had to use the I-photos.
and now the Babolovsky Palace is hidden behind a fence, it is impossible to see the bath.
However, I was lucky. Together with me, a persistent couple walked around the palace in the hope of finding a convenient gap.
With their help, I managed to get two exclusive shots.
Finally, I will tell you one more legend. She seems plausible enough.
In September 1941, Tsarskoye Selo was occupied by German troops. A post was organized near the Babolovsky Palace, guarding this man-made miracle. The Nazis wanted to take the Tsar-bath to Germany. However, the power of twentieth century technology was not enough for this transportation. So the Tsar-bath remained in its place in the Babolovsky Palace. God willing, it will come to restoration)))
The walk turned out to be very long, judge for yourself: I won’t say the distance in kilometers, but it was more than an hour.
But the object itself did not take much time, it is not very interesting to consider the fence, even a new one))).
Last look at the area...
Dam. The bowl under the bridge with its outlines resembles the Tsar-bath
Although the grass is cut only along the paths, the park in the palace area seems to be more well-kept.
Back I was already on the bus, and it, of course, was faster. Only walking along the paths of a huge park was much more interesting.
Where to look:
On foot along Parkovaya street, along Catherine's park. You can also walk through the park to the Pink Guard House, and then along the alley Babolovskoye Highway everything is straight and straight ...
You can also get from the railway station of Pushkin, or the Catherine Palace by bus188 and 273 to the stop Starogatchinskoe shosse.
© Elena Astashkevich, blog I am a Petersburger
Not everyone knows about the masterpiece of stone craftsmanship of our ancestors - a giant bath in Babolovsky Park, which is comparable in quality of work, and surpasses the sarcophagus of the Cheops pyramid in size. Moreover, this object, which is popularly called the "Tsar Bath", is listed on the pages of the Guinness Book of Records, however, it is never considered a museum exhibit. This unique granite masterpiece is treated like trash by the authorities.
Of course, the age difference between the masterpieces of St. Petersburg and Egypt is huge. The sarcophagus in the pyramid is at least five thousand years old, and the Tsar Bath is less than two hundred years old. The weight, dimensions and processing technique of the latter are striking. Russian masons did not create anything like this either before the manufacture of the Tsar-bath at the end of the 19th century, or after. Even modern craftsmen who have the appropriate granite processing equipment will find it difficult to fulfill such an order.
Initially, the weight of the red-granite block interspersed with green Labrador, from which it was planned to cut down the bath, was more than 160 tons. When the work was completed, the tub weighed 48 tons. The figure is big even in today's times. Not every modern technique will lift such a load.
It is interesting that no one has ever bathed in the Tsar-bath. You will learn about the reasons a little later. And here again we can recall the sarcophagus from the pyramid of Cheops. The researchers found that the sarcophagus was not the last refuge of the Egyptian pharaoh. They buried him in another place, and the pyramid, which is quite likely, was not a tomb. Until now, no one knows anything about the true purpose of the greatest objects made of granite!
The exhibits of the Kremlin in Moscow - the Tsar Cannon and the Tsar Bell are known throughout our planet and are available to guests of the Russian capital, which cannot be said about the Tsar Bath, which is abandoned in Babolovsky Park, located near St. Petersburg. Why is the existence of this masterpiece kept in the strictest confidence, all the information seems to be deliberately hidden and not made public? What prevents the state authorities from taking it out of the ruins of the abandoned Babolovsky palace and presenting it to the world community, like the same above-mentioned Moscow Tsar Bell and Tsar Cannon? There are probably reasons, and quite serious ones.
We know from history that the palace and the park got their names after the village of Babolovo, which Empress Catherine II presented as a gift to her Serene Highness Prince Grigory Potemkin, who was her favorite. Since the village was surrounded by dense forests, they decided not to plant a park, but to adapt a forest area under it. The territory was cleared, drained and planted with oaks and larches, which had not previously grown in these places. She began to resemble an English park. In 1785, a wooden and then a stone palace was built in it. It was a one-story summer building with seven rooms, made in the then fashionable Gothic style. Due to the fact that the palace was located remotely, it was rarely visited, and after ten years it fell into disrepair.
The second birth of this building was the years of its restructuring (1824-1825). The author of the Transfiguration and Trinity Cathedrals, the Narva and Moscow triumphal gates in St. Petersburg and food warehouses in Moscow, the architect V. Stasov, was engaged in it.
Folk legends say that in 1823, the grandson of Catherine the Great, Alexander I, who liked cold bathing, ordered that the Babolovsky Palace be remodeled and a giant granite bath be built instead of a white marble bath. Because of this, Stasov was forced to expand the main hall to accommodate the "new" granite bath. Moreover, the builders first installed the Tsar-bath, and only then erected the walls of the hall around it. There was a cast-iron staircase with a railing leading to the bath, which rested on columns made of the same cast iron and had viewing platforms. Now it's like they didn't exist! Probably, even in the era of the USSR, cast-iron structures were dismantled and put into scrap metal.
There is some evidence that a unique granite monolith bath was commissioned by Samson Sukhanov, a well-known Petersburger, who led the production of rostral columns near the Exchange on Vasilyevsky Island and helped create the pedestal of the Moscow monument to Minin and Pozharsky.
Samson Ksenofontovich Sukhanov was born in 1768 in the village of Zavotezhitsy from the Vologda province. His father was a shepherd. The future creator of the masterpiece in his younger years worked as a barge hauler, farm laborer, shoemaker, hunter; he was wounded by a polar bear when Samson brought down an animal with a horn. However, since childhood, Sukhanov's passion was modeling clay toys and drawing.
Samson Sukhanov
In the summer of 1797, he arrived with a fish convoy from Arkhangelsk to the Northern capital. There, Samson began working as a stonemason at the construction of the Mikhailovsky Castle, showing himself in the best possible way. When the construction was over, he organized his artel. Sukhanov had already learned to read and write, he could read architectural drawings and make calculations. The architect of the Kazan Cathedral A. Voronikhin entrusted his artel to build the outer colonnade, and then the inner columns of the temple. For this work, Sukhanov was awarded a gold medal. Further orders were received for sculptural groups of the Admiralty, the Mining Institute, Rostral columns, embankments, etc. The work, of course, was done by hand, using a hammer and chisel, and, of course, "by eye", however, with extraordinary accuracy.
It should not be surprising that the engineer Betancourt, who was at the royal court, turned to the famous artel of stonemasons, after which Sukhanov concluded an agreement with him in 1818 to make a bath, taking 16 thousand rubles for work.
In the same year, a granite block weighing more than 160 tons was delivered from one of the islands of Finland. The masters had only to cut off everything unnecessary (120 tons). The work took ten years, and it was completed on time with the highest quality. As a result, a polished granite bath with a height of 196 cm, a depth of 152 cm, a diameter of 533 cm and a weight of 46 tons was obtained. It holds eight buckets of water - about eighty thousand liters!
The craftsmen, at the same time, were able to demonstrate an amazing feeling for the stone. The walls of the bowl have a minimum thickness of 45 cm, and this makes it possible to withstand the pressure of a multi-ton water mass, being, at the same time, the limit for fragile granite. Professor and art critic Y. Zembitsky said that since the time of Ancient Egypt, there was nothing so colossal of granite. When stone-cutting work was completed, walls were built around the bath - an octagonal tower. In the room, cast-iron footbridges with descents, railings, as well as viewing platforms were made around the perimeter on brackets.
The work was completed in 1826, and four years before that, the customer, Alexander I, had died, taking the secret of the purpose of this unique structure to the grave. How did he plan to use it?
The data that it took ten whole years to cut down the bath make it doubtful that it was done by order of the emperor, and here's why! If Alexander really ordered the construction of a bath in the palace, it is hard to believe that he would have waited ten years to bathe in this granite vat. The orders of the sovereign were executed in the shortest possible time, and such a period can already be called long-term construction!
Another point is doubtful. There are clear discrepancies in the official history of the restructuring of the Babolovsky Palace and its reconstruction. As mentioned above, the architect was forced to expand the main hall in order to place the Tsar Bath there, while the builders erected its walls only when this bath was already standing. If the palace was rebuilt for only two years, then it turns out that the Tsar Bath was already there.
There is an obvious inconsistency here. If the emperor ordered the construction of a bath in 1823, the implementation of the project took a decade, which means that it should have been installed in the main palace hall no earlier than 1833. But by that time, as the chronicle says, the palace had been rebuilt eight years ago, and the Tsar Bath took its place.
What kind of bath did Samson Sukhanov cut out of granite, and did he make it at all? How could the Tsar-bath be installed in the Babolovsky Palace even before it was made? Here again there is an association with a granite sarcophagus in Egypt, installed in the central chamber of the Cheops pyramid during its construction. The researchers saw that the sarcophagus was larger than the entrance to the chamber. Therefore, the builders had to bring it into the room before erecting the walls and ceiling of the chamber inside the pyramid.
It is curious that the current scientists, having carefully studied the sarcophagus of the Cheops pyramid, concluded that it was not created for the pharaoh at all. It was never found out what functions he performed, although there are a sufficient number of versions. A similar situation is also developing with the Tsar-bath! There are as many mysteries in it as in the Egyptian sarcophagus.
About the impressive size of the bath was written above. It is not possible to make this granite masterpiece by hand. Here, tools were needed that could easily cut and process granite, as well as powerful lifting installations that could lift a granite block of 160 tons and turn it. When you look at a photograph of the Tsar Bath, you get the impression that it was cut out on a huge lathe.
In the course of studying the Tsar-bath, many questions arise! How did such an incredible amount of water warm up in it, and how was it kept warm? Even more puzzling is the fact that there is no drain hole in the bath, hence how the water then drained. Today there are two versions that explain what the Babolov bowl was intended for. The first one is household. The Romanov family traditionally spent the summer in Tsarskoe Selo or Peterhof. In the heat there was a need to cool off in cool water. Since the august persons, especially the ladies, could not be naked in public, they could do their own refreshing in this pool.
Why wasn't the pool made from propylene? Because there were no other materials besides granite at that time.
Why wasn't the water heated? Because the pool was going to be used only in summer and only for the purpose of cooling. The reconstruction plan of water supply speaks in favor of this version.
The bathroom doesn't really have a drain hole. True, under its foundation there is a collector that receives water, while the bottom of the bowl is located one and a half meters higher than the surface of the nearby pond. In all likelihood, when the main work was completed, the heirs, due to the death of the customer (Alexander I), decided not to arrange a pool, but to demonstrate the bath as an object of stone-cutting art. It follows from this that the Tsar-bath, like its Moscow "colleagues", has never been used for its true purpose.
Another version is "Masonic". Those who adhere to it consider the Babolovsky palace with a bathtub as the future main Masonic temple. At the same time, they see a large number of Masonic signs in the palace decorations. This version is refuted by the fact that Alexander I issued in 1822 the highest rescript, which provided for the destruction of Masonic lodges and any secret societies. It is hard to believe that the Russian sovereign, getting rid of the lodges, left one for himself.
There is also a "space" version. As a certain Yu. Babikov wrote, “there is no doubt that the bowl itself is an element of an antenna transducer-emitter of viton microwave oscillations for space ultra-long-range communications.”
It is even possible that the Tsar Bath was not cut down by masons of the era of Alexander I. Maybe it rested in the Babolovsky forest even before the creation of the park and the palace. And when this find was found, the architects of the palace came up with the idea to make a bath here, thus adapting the granite vat as a bath. The walls of the bathhouse were built around the object, after which, such a new designation appeared among the people as “Tsar-bath”. Not only who its real creator remains under a veil of secrecy, so the granite masterpiece is not put on public display. Could the masons of the reign of Alexander I have been able to carve such a giant bowl out of a solid red granite monolith? Indeed, even in modern times, this is quite problematic.
Babolovsky park and palace suffered a tragic story. At first, they stopped caring for the park, then sawed centuries-old trees for household needs, and then the Great Patriotic War came, which destroyed the palace. As a result of the bombing, its vaults collapsed, most of its buildings became ruins. And only the mysterious bath remains safe and sound. There is information that the Nazi invaders intended to take her out, but they failed to do this, because they did not have the technical capabilities to lift and transport this 50-ton giant.
Today, the cost of reconstructing the Babolovsky Palace, as well as the area adjacent to it, is estimated at one hundred million dollars. However, the investor, unfortunately, is not located. This economic paradox simply does not fit in my head: two centuries ago, Russia, which was armed with a chisel and a hammer, had the opportunity to create this miracle, while the modern Russian Federation cannot simply maintain, use and demonstrate it. Has the country weakened materially and technically?
Unfortunately, tourists are not taken to Babolovsky Park and palace ruins. These objects are not even mentioned in guidebooks. In addition, the local history museum lacks information about both the park and the bathroom! Can this be understood as a surprising indifference to one's own history, or a clear example of silence and deliberate concealment of an object that defies scientific explanation?
Babolovskaya granite bathAmazing Saint Petersburg
It turns out that not everyone knows about the masterpiece of stone craftsmanship of our ancestors - a giant bathtub, neither the masters of ancient Egypt, nor other ancient cultures had anything to do with making such a thing. Due to the fact that the palace still lies in ruins and has not been restored, you will not find much information about the bowl.
On this topic: Dopetrovsky Peter and Babolovskaya bath | |
Babolovsky Palace
This artifact is also called "Babolovskaya Chalice", "Bath of the Russian Empire", "Granite Masterpiece" and "Eighth Wonder of the World". Meanwhile, you will not find it in any popular guidebook for St. Petersburg and its suburbs. In Tsarskoye Selo, on the outskirts of Babolovsky Park, there are the ruins of the Babolovsky Palace.
Babolovsky Palace
If you look through the wall gap inside the octagonal tower, then your eyes will see a giant granite bowl, a colossal monolithic pool, carved from a single piece of red granite, about two meters high and more than 5 meters in diameter. This is the famous Babolov bowl.
Babolovskaya bowl
Babolovsky Palace was built in the era of Catherine II (1785) as a one-story dacha-bath for summer holidays. The red brick building was made in the then fashionable Gothic style and blended harmoniously into the park landscape.
Ekaterina's grandson Alexander1 loved this place, and allegedly had intimate dates here. Alexander redesigned the palace and ordered instead of the white marble one, a giant granite bath, which was contracted to be made by the famous St. Petersburg stonemason Samson Sukhanov.
The court engineer Betancourt turned to the well-known artel of stonemasons, and in 1818 Sukhanov concluded an agreement for the manufacture of a bathtub, requesting 16 thousand rubles for his work.
In 1818, a granite block weighing more than 160 tons was delivered to Babolovo from one of the Finnish islands. The craftsmen had to cut off everything superfluous (120 tons). The work took 10 years and was completed on time with the highest quality. The result is a polished granite bath: height 196 cm, depth 152 cm, diameter 533 cm, weight 48 tons. Data on a displacement of 8 thousand buckets, according to the calculated data - 12 tons of water.
At the same time, the masters demonstrated an amazing feeling for the stone. The thickness of the walls of the bowl is minimal - 45 cm, which allows it to withstand the pressure of a multi-ton mass of water, but at the same time it is the limit for fragile granite. The art critic, Professor Ya. Zembitsky said that "this work of the Russian artist is all the more worthy of attention, since nothing so colossal of granite has been known since the time of the Egyptians."
After the stone-cutting work was completed, walls were erected around the bath - an octagonal tower. Along the perimeter of the room, cast-iron walkways with railings, descents, and viewing platforms were made on brackets.
Contemporaries are puzzled by the fact that there is no drain hole in the Bath, and there are also no technical possibilities for supplying and heating water. The "hole" at the bottom of the bathtub does not in any way draw on the drain hole and is most likely made relatively recently.
Babolovskaya bowl
Today there are two versions explaining the purpose of the Babolov bowl.
The first version is household. By tradition, the Romanov Family spent the summer seasons in Tsarskoe or Peterhof. Monarchs sweat too. On hot days, there was a need to freshen up in cool water. Since the august persons, especially ladies, should not be naked in public, they could do their refreshing in this pool. Why is the pool not made of polypropylene? - Yes, because there were no other materials besides granite then. Why wasn't the water heated? - So because this pool was planned to be used only in the summer and only for cooling.
Most likely, after the completion of the main work, in connection with the death of the Customer (Alexander1), the heirs abandoned the construction of the pool, deciding to demonstrate the bath as an object of stone-cutting art. Thus, like "Tsar Cannon" and "Tsar Bell", "Tsar Bath" was never used for its intended purpose.
The second version is "Masonic". Its supporters consider the Babolovsky palace with a bowl as the future main Masonic temple. At the same time, "specialists" see numerous Masonic signs in the scenery of the palace. This version does not agree well with the fact that in 1822 Alexander I issued the highest rescript "On the destruction of Masonic lodges and all sorts of secret societies." It is hard to believe that Alexander1, destroying the lodges, left one for himself.
There is a third version - space. Someone, Yu. Babikov, writes: "There is no doubt that the bowl itself is an element of an antenna converter-emitter of viton microwave oscillations for ultra-long-range space communications .."
The twentieth century did not spare the Babolovsky park and the palace. At first, they stopped caring for the park, then they cut down hundred-year-old trees for economic needs, then the war came and destroyed the palace. But the bowl has been preserved to our times, safe and sound! The Germans could not take it out, because in this part of Europe they did not have the technical capabilities to lift and transport a 50-ton giant.
Today, the cost of restoring the Babolovsky Palace and the surrounding area is estimated at $100 million. But the investor is not located. This economic paradox boggles my mind: 200 years ago, Russia, armed with a hammer and chisel, had the opportunity to create this miracle, and the modern Russian Federation does not have the opportunity to simply contain, use and show IT. Have we become poorer and technically weaker?
What is common between the Tsar Cannon, the Tsar Bell and the Tsar Bath? None of these artifacts was used for its intended purpose: the Tsar Cannon never fired, the Tsar Bell never rang, and most likely no one ever bathed in the Tsar Bath.
But if the first two - exhibits of the Moscow Kremlin - are known all over the world, then the Tsar Bath modestly hides on the outskirts of Babolovsky Park in Tsarskoye Selo, away from tourist routes. And this is all the more strange, because the Babolovskaya bowl is a true masterpiece of stone-cutting art. But who and when made it is a big mystery.
Miracle in ruins
Which came first: the chicken or the egg? Many generations of scholastics struggled in vain over this eternal question. But in our case, the “egg” was exactly before the “chicken”. That is, first they installed a huge round granite bath and only then erected walls and a domed vault around it. However, first things first.
Babolovsky Park is not spoiled by the attention of the guests of Tsarskoye Selo. It is not replete with architectural sights, and in general it is very neglected, it looks more like a forest. But here is silence, peace and fresh air. And if you walk along the main alley - Babolovskaya clearing - almost to its end, and then turn right, you can go to a large pond, formed in the place where the Kuzminka River is blocked by a dam bridge.
On the other side - the ruins of red brick - all that remains of the Babolovsky Palace, bombed during the Great Patriotic War by the Nazis and still not restored. However, the ruins are surrounded by a fence, and a sign hangs on the gate stating that the building is under restoration. There are guards and guard dogs.
But if you manage to negotiate with them and look through the gap in the wall inside the octagonal tower, a real miracle will open up to your eyes - a giant perfectly round bowl, carved from a single block of granite, as the official story says, by order of Emperor Alexander I, by the masters of the St. Petersburg artel Samson Ksenofontovich Sukhanov.
"The Work of the Russian Sculptor"
Stonemasons worked on the royal order for seven years - from 1811 to 1818. A 160-ton dark pink granite block was found on one of the Finnish islands. Where the bath was carved out of it - directly in the quarry or near the installation site - is not known for certain. But the result is a bowl that has no equal in the world.
Its weight is 48 tons, diameter - 5.33 meters, depth - 1.52 meters, height - 1.96 meters. It included up to 800 buckets of water. The work done by the masons can be called truly infernal. For example, just to give a granite block a cupped shape, it was necessary to make tens of billions of blows with a mallet on the scarpel (this is such a tool, a steel rod, expanded at one end in the form of a sharply honed blade).
It is necessary to hit the same number of times so that the outer contours become perfectly rounded. In addition, at that time there were no hard-alloy stone-cutting tools. Tools made of simple steel, which the masters worked with, had to be sharpened after every 3-4 strokes on granite. You just wonder how, under such conditions, they managed to make a bowl of an ideal geometric shape!
No wonder contemporaries admired this unique creation. Here is what Pavel Petrovich Svinin wrote in Otechestvennye zapiski for 1818: “Finally, Sukhanov finished this summer this beautiful, the only bath for the Babolovskaya bath ... Many of the St. Petersburg residents went on purpose to see this work of the Russian Sculptor. It is all the more worthy of attention because since the time of the Egyptians nothing so huge of granite has been known. Foreigners did not want to believe that Sukhanov was able to produce this miracle of sculpture or sculptural art ... "
To accommodate the bath, it was necessary to rebuild the palace, carried out in 1824-1829 according to the project of the architect Vasily Petrovich Stasov. Moreover, a bath was first installed, and only then the walls of the pavilion with a stone dome were erected.
Mysteries of the Babolovskaya bowl
And yet this magnificent bowl is fraught with many mysteries. Historians believe that it was used to bathe members of the royal family on hot summer days. After all, it is not appropriate for royal persons to appear in a negligee in front of the eyes of an idle public! But the question arises: how was it filled? Were all 800 buckets poured into it manually, so to speak, on demand?
The writer and journalist Mikhail Ivanovich Pylyaev briefly and very vaguely talks about the method of filling the pool: “When the right gateway near the bridge is opened a little, the water quickly fills the bath.” It is also not clear how the water then drained: after all, there is no drain hole in the bath.
In general, the Babolovsky Palace is not a palace at all. You can’t call a house so loudly, where there are only 10 rooms (or even seven, if you count the entire right, “bathroom”, part for one room). This is not a bathhouse, but rather a poetic place of solitude, romantic dates, a quiet rest after hunting, a ball and other noisy court entertainments. So there is a suspicion that they never washed in this “bath”, and did not bathe in the bath.
An even greater engineering mystery is how the granite block was delivered to the walls of the Babolovsky Palace. It is well known what incredible efforts it took to bring the famous Thunder-stone for the pedestal of the monument to Peter I to St. Isaac's Cathedral.
But it was transported along the Neva on a barge, and then it remained to drag it some hundred meters. And in our case, a 160-ton block had to be pulled for several tens of miles over rugged terrain - and this was in an era when there was neither steam nor electricity!
And even if we assume that the bowl was cut down directly in the quarry, as a result of which the load became four times lighter, the task of transporting it still seems overwhelming.
It should be noted that during the Great Patriotic War, the Germans, who had incomparably greater technical capabilities than the engineers of the 19th century, were forced to abandon the idea of exporting a unique artifact from the palace to Germany: they did not have suitable equipment and vehicles.
Doubts were repeatedly expressed that the Babolovskaya bowl was made by hand. Here is what one turner writes (spelling and punctuation are preserved): “For us, sorry for the expression “they’re pretending” that this master allegedly made it: Sukhanov ... did it for seven years, he planed like “papa Carlo” polished and so on ... utter nonsense ... with all responsibility as a (universal turner of the 5th category) I declare that this is machine processing, the concave, convex surfaces of this bath, the most accurate circle around the entire diameter, exactly the spherical surface of the lower part of the bath, inside along the bottom how the finest (illegible) along the entire diameter ... such a product cannot be made by hand, and even more so polished ... it seems that only yesterday it came out from under the machine ... polishing (dark, not visible in the photo) Isaac columns are grade 4-5. This cannot be achieved without high-speed polishing and grinding tools.”
But if the respected craftsman is right and the bowl is machined, where did such a huge lathe come from? It remains to be assumed that this artifact is much older than previously thought, and we inherited it from some highly developed civilization that disappeared from the face of the Earth a long time ago.
Note that only the sarcophagus in the pyramid of Cheops, which is at least 5,000 years old (and most likely much more), can be compared with the grandeur of the granite miracle of the Babolovskaya bowl. By the way, modern researchers have come to the conclusion that this granite box was not at all intended for the burial of the pharaoh. And what functions he actually performed is unclear.
The same situation develops with the Babolovskaya bowl. There are many versions about its purpose. For example, it is assumed that it lay somewhere in the surrounding swamps from time immemorial and was accidentally discovered at the beginning of the 19th century. And the writer Yuri Babikov said: "There is no doubt that the bowl itself is an element of an antenna converter-emitter of viton microwave oscillations for ultra-long-range space communications."
Doubts just exist. One thing is undeniable: before us is a masterpiece of stone-cutting technology. It is extremely difficult to do something like this even with the modern development of technology, on modern machines.
And if the stone cutters of the 19th century knew how to do such things, why was this skill lost by their descendants? And finally, why is this artifact hidden from human eyes for many years and is almost in a landfill? There is no clear answer to these questions.
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