I have wanted to visit this river for a very long time. Of course, he lived next to her almost all his life, but never saw her alive. But the fact is that for almost 200 years the Neglinka River has been flowing underground, and only the names of the streets along which it passes remind of its existence: Samotechnaya, Trubnaya, Neglinnaya, Kuznetsky Most..
But we know that there IS a river! Thanks to the community mosblog
I finally had the chance to see her with my own eyes. 
1. The Neglinka River begins in the Maryina Roshcha area, flows to Suvorovskaya Square, and then under Samotyochny Square, Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Neglinnaya Street, Teatralny Proezd, Revolution Square. Further, it is very interesting: one branch flows under the Alexander Garden (it served as a “ditch” that defended the Moscow Kremlin), and the second - under Red Square.
2. The Neglinka River flowed freely until the beginning of the 19th century, after which they decided to drive it underground - it became too smelly then due to the fact that conscious citizens dumped their waste there en masse. And so, in 1817-19, a collector was built, and from then on it was hidden from human eyes. 
3. You can get to Neglinka through an ordinary sewer hatch. 
4. We started in the Dostoevskaya metro area. The historicity of the building is immediately apparent. Nowadays no one would build such a collector lined with bricks. I wonder if it is an architectural monument? 
5. You have to walk slowly because you are walking straight on the water. It's good that there are shoe covers. 
6. We begin to look at familiar hatches from an unusual side :) 
7. Some kind of piles. As with the metro, the collector was broken a couple of times by builders who did not calculate the load when driving piles. However, it is not very clear what the builders could have built there in the park. 
9. There are a lot of interesting things in the collector. Here, for example, is a heating main 
10. Closer to the Garden Ring, another river flows into the Neglinka from the left - Naprudnaya. This river begins in the area of the Rizhsky Station, flows under the Catherine Park, where it forms a pond. 
11. However, quite a lot of sewers with all sorts of streams flow into the river 
12.
13. Closer to Samotyochnaya Square there is a place where the floor of the collector is decorated with marble! 
14. There are different people here. There are also pigs 
15. 
16. There is some kind of white coating on the ceiling of the collector. 
17. And the bricks are so old and authentic... Oh, what is this? Is it really a flower? 
18. And so, on Samotyochnaya Square, the route along the old collector is interrupted and the river flows into a new one. 
19. The new collector is located a couple of meters lower than the old one; in order to go down there, you need to use elements of climbing equipment. 
20. 
21. The new collector was built in 1962. It was needed because during the rains the old one was constantly overflowing during the rains and there were constant floods on Tsvetnoy Boulevard and Neglinnaya. 
22. This collector is wider and much more spacious than the old one. Here you can walk along the "embankments" 
23. But you should walk more carefully. You might get run over by some stream or drain. 
24. We are already walking under the left side of Tsvetnoy Boulevard (the one that is not next to the metro and the circus). In some places there are ladders to hatches. 
25. For some reason all sorts of crap is wound on parts of them 
26. The storm drains of Tsvetnoy Boulevard all lead here. And through them we see sunlight! 
27. Some hatches are periodically found along the river bed. Is there really something under Neglinka? No, these are hatches from the surface that fell here. 
28. Streams again 
29. Traces of previous visitors 
30. On the approach to Trubnaya Square, the river makes a turn. Well, like the boulevard, actually. You know this bend. 
31.
32. Even further, a passage to the old collector will open. Nothing much has flowed through it for a long time. 
33. But you can walk along it to the “well”. This well is located directly under Trubnaya Square and was dug during the construction of the Trubnaya metro station. So that all groundwater flows there. But something didn’t work out for them and the well was filled with water before they completed it. 
34. Now there are a bunch of all sorts of pieces of iron floating around here... Although what am I saying, pieces of iron can’t float. 
35. And we move on. Getting closer and closer to the center. All kinds of art are becoming more and more common 
36. The eternal philosophical question. 
37. Happens with enviable regularity. 
38. Apparently someone really wanted to ask those climbing in Neglinka: why do you come here? 
39. According to the story of our guide - Enigma - a digger who climbed into some cool place, burned himself shamefully there, after which the passage to this place was closed. Now many in the digger crowd hate him 
40. However, wall-to-wall showdowns between diggers are not uncommon here. 
41. There are small stalactites 
42. Sign again. Reminds me of Syana, where such goodness is more than enough. 
43. And now the new collector ends, the historical collector begins again 
44. Much wider and more beautiful this time! Still, Neglinka is already much fuller here than in the Dostoevskaya area. 
45. This tunnel was built at the beginning of the 20th century. 
46. Still the very center - Teatralny Proezd! There should be no remake here, either on the ground or underground! 
47. Both the side paths and the riverbed are all brick! 
48. And at the top there is some kind of white coating 
49. And here is the final point of our route - somewhere under Revolution Square. Until recently, it was possible to go further: under the Alexander Garden, Red Square, and go all the way to the mouth of the Moscow River! 
50. It is here that the Neglinka divides into two branches. But just recently (in April) the FSO put gratings on both channels here, as a result of which it is now impossible to go further. It is also dangerous to come close to the bars - there is a motion sensor there. The special services can light up and “wait” at the exit.
54. And finally... Sunlight!! We climb out through the same hatch that we climbed in. 
55. And so, after almost four hours, our excursion ended. It’s funny that I took a trolleybus from home to the starting point, but during the walk we walked twice as far there and the same distance back! Approximately from Dostoevskaya to approximately Red Square.
Having put down all the equipment, we walked through Samotyochny Park, looking with new eyes at the places under which we had just roamed. 
56. This is how it came out interesting walk. It’s interesting, of course, that I’ve walked along all these streets hundreds of times, walked around each of them, well, just up and down, I probably know every centimeter :) And I only had the chance to find out what the area UNDER them looks like now. Although, of course, there have been attempts to climb there for a long time. Once a friend from Latvia suggested doing this, but it was a little scary, not knowing what and how, where to climb, where to go, what to do if something suddenly happened. In the end we didn't go. 
Once again, I sincerely thank the community for this walk. mosblog . By the way, I advise everyone to sign up for it: they often invite you to various interesting events: excursions to unusual places, trips to the theater, all sorts of master classes. If you write something like this on your blog, you definitely need to go there!
Name, etymology of the name– Neglinnaya (Neglimna, Neglinna, Neglinka, Samoteka) The name Neglinnaya (and the more common one - Neglinka) can come from both the designation of a river “with a non-clay bottom” and from a “shallow river”.
The name "Gravity" was often applied to rivers flowing from flowing ponds, the water from which flowed away "by gravity." A similar word, for example, is the second name of the Altufevskaya River.
Checked! Geographical information– A river in the very center of Moscow. It is a left tributary of the Moscow River. The length is about 7.5 kilometers. It originated from the Pashensky swamp near Maryina Roshcha and crossed the city center from north to south.
Now the river collector runs along Novosuschevskaya Street, 3rd Samotechny Lane. Then under the park area between Olympic Avenue and Samotyochnaya Street. Then the river leaves Tsvetnoy Boulevard on its right, passes under the Maly Theater, the Metropol Hotel and GUM and, passing Gostiny Dvor and Zaryadye, flows into the Moscow River just below the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge.
The trace of the river can be seen in the names of the streets: Samotyochny Lane, Samotyochnaya Street, Neglinnaya Street, Trubnaya Square, etc.
Tributaries – Naprudnaya, Drop, Uspensky vrezhek.
Historical reference –
At the end of the 18th century, Neglinka was heavily polluted by household sewage. And Catherine II gave the order to restore order in this matter. And in addition to reducing the number of discharges into the river to a minimum, it was necessary to improve the reservoir.
The first underground section appeared in 1792 under Trubnaya Square, where the river was enclosed in a collector, i.e. into the pipe. They decided to enclose the rest of the channel in an open channel.
The next stage was built in 1819. And the river already flowed underground from Samotechnaya Street to its mouth.
In the second half of the 19th century, the collector stopped coping with the flow of water entering it. Then, at the same time, the first illegal connections were discovered. Owners of local buildings quietly poured sewage into the sewer.
By 1887, engineer N. M. Levachev reconstructed the collector. They cleared the debris, deepened the bottom and lined it with white stone.
In 1906, the upper reaches of the Neglinka and its tributary, the Naprudnaya River, were removed underground.
In 1910-1914, the damaged areas were repaired again. And on the site near the Maly Theater and the Metropol Hotel, the legendary Shchekotovsky tunnel of parabolic section appeared, the author of which was engineer M.P. Shchekotov. A collector of such dimensions (3.6 meters high and 5.75 meters wide) could immediately solve the problem of periodic flooding due to the Neglinka spill. The project included the reconstruction of the entire collector, but the First World War interfered with these plans.
Flooding occurred in 1949,1956,1960. And the downpours of July 14 and 25, 1965 caused flooding in the central part of the city.
The last two “floods” served as an incentive for the construction of a new collector near Zaryadye in 1966. And the old collector under the Alexander Garden took on the role of backup.
And although the flooding of the territory has decreased, it has not stopped completely.
After the floods of July 7 and August 9, 1973, a decision was made to build a new collector for the Neglinnaya River.
It was built from 1974 to 1989. And it runs from Durova Street to the Metropol Hotel. The section from Samotechnaya Square to Trubnaya ceased to be used for its intended purpose, and the section from Trubnaya Square to Teatralnaya was converted into a cable collector.
There is an erroneous version that in the 90s Manezhnaya Square a section of open channel appeared. In fact, it is a completely artificial reservoir with a closed cycle, i.e. essentially a large fountain. But practically under it there really is an old sewer running under the Alexander Garden.
In the 2000s, they tried to connect the metro drainage collector to Neglinka. However, the tunneling shield under Rozhdestvensky Boulevard hit the quicksand and remained there. This is where the legends began that you can get to the metro from Neglinka.
In 2016, work on constructing the collector was resumed, but at the time of writing this book it has not yet been completed.
In the 1880s, Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovsky visited the Neglinka collector as part of a survey before reconstruction. Impressions about this journey can be found in the book “Moscow and Muscovites” in the chapter “Secrets of Neglinka”.
Description of the underground reservoir design– As you can see from the historical information, the Neglinka collector was rebuilt more than once. Because of this, it abounds in different cross-sectional shapes of the collector, and winds quite a bit.
The collector is single-strand. In the upper reaches it is represented by an arched cross-section with a height of 2.3 meters, which in some places gives way to a rectangular one of the same height and width, and in the very upper reaches it turns into a round cross-section. Here the collector is made of ceramic brick throughout, and the bottom is partially lined with white stone.
After merging with Naprudnaya, the collector continues a little further in the “historical” section. Then it turns left and approaches a site built in 1974-1989. This is a wide rectangular collector (width up to 6 meters, height up to 4), made of sections of precast reinforced concrete. In some places it is reinforced with shotcrete. On the sides there are “embankments” that are quite convenient for walking. Although the depth in this area rarely exceeds 10-15 centimeters.
Next to Trubnaya Square, on the right, there is the old Neglinnaya sewer, along which Gilyarovsky walked. The junction of the collectors is popularly called “Patisson”; underground gatherings are often held here.
The lower reaches of the old collector are clogged, and if you go upstream (although there is no current here anymore), you can get into the metro collector under construction, which was already mentioned in the historical reference. The unused section of the old sewer has an arched section about 2 meters high and a bottom lined with white stone.
The wide section stretches to the Maly Theater. And underneath it begins the famous Shchekotovsky tunnel. This place can safely be called a highlight not only of the Neglinka, but of all the underground rivers of Moscow in general. And for Neglinka herself, the Shchekotovsky Tunnel is a calling card.
The length of the tunnel is 117 meters, height - 3.6 meters, width - 5.75 meters. It is entirely made of ceramic brick, which has been preserved almost in its original form over more than 100 years of operation. The only obvious but minor defect is grooves on the bottom, made by water. But if you remember how water pierces through prefabricated and monolithic reinforced concrete in other rivers, then you can only be surprised at the survivability of this structure.
In terms of its dimensions, geometry and engineering solutions, the Shchekotovsky tunnel is an excellent example of domestic hydraulic engineering. And if it were possible to completely enclose the river in just such a section, then the problem of flooding would be solved.
At the end of the Shchekotovsky tunnel there are 2 attractions at once.
The first is the “Guillotine”, or rather a gate chamber. The guide posts for the bolts give the structure a resemblance to an execution weapon. By the way, the shutters can still be found on the top platform of the camera. But it is unlikely that they will ever work as intended.
The second attraction is the collector under the Alexander Garden. Previously, the Neglinka flowed through it to its confluence with the Moscow River. And after the laying of a new sewer line near Zaryadye in 1966, the part under the Alexander Garden turned rather into a tributary, receiving small drainage networks and nameless streams.
In the lower reaches, the collector is made of prefabricated reinforced concrete rings with a diameter of 3.5 meters. And there is another attraction here - the “Pillar of Death”. This is a drainage drain in the Zaryadye area with a powerful but not constant flow of water. The etymology of the name is unknown. Most likely it's just a pretty name. But it has been reliably established that bathing under this stream is not dangerous to life or health. At one time, the procedure of swimming under the Pillar of Death was considered a rite of passage into diggers.
At the confluence with the Moscow River, a three-span spillway was built.
Most inspection wells are suitable for lowering and lifting, but many of them are located on the roadway.
It is curious that after many reconstructions, the probability of a collector wave occurring in Neglinka remains quite high. In addition, since 2015, a grate has been installed at the end of the Shchekotovsky tunnel, which can easily turn into a dam if enough debris sticks to it.
Neglinnaya (disambiguation)- Neglinnaya: Neglinnaya river in Moscow Neglinnaya street street in Moscow ... Wikipedia
Neglinnaya- This article is about the river. For the street, see Neglinnaya Street. This term has other meanings, see Neglinka. Neglinnaya, Neglinka, Gravity... Wikipedia
Neglinnaya street- Moscow Neglinnaya street. House No. 14 ... Wikipedia
Neglinnaya (street)- Neglinnaya street Moscow general information District Central Administrative District Length 0.87 km District Meshchansky (No. 16/2 20/2 (p. 1) residential, No. 2/6 20/2 non-residential) Tverskoy (No. 15, 17, 23/6, 29/14 non-residential) District court 1. Meshchansky 2. Tverskoy Nearest metro station ... Wikipedia
river- rivulet, river, rivulet, rivulet, (water, blue) (artery, road, highway, route), blue nile, mouth, tributary, stream, channel Dictionary of Russian synonyms. river stream / figuratively: blue road Dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language. Practical... ... Synonym dictionary
non-clay- noun, number of synonyms: 1 river (2073) ASIS Dictionary of Synonyms. V.N. Trishin. 2013… Synonym dictionary
Moskva river- Moscow River View from the Crimean Bridge in Moscow upstream of the river Flows through the territory of Moscow, Smolensk and Moscow regions Istok Starkov ... Wikipedia
Neglinnaya- (Neglimna, Neglinna, Neglinka), a river in the central part of Moscow, a left tributary. Length 7.5 km. Starting from the Pashensky swamp nearby and crossing the central part of the city from north to south (flowed along the modern streets of Streletskaya, Novosuschevskaya, ... ... Moscow (encyclopedia)
The Pashenskoe swamp could occupy the territory up to modern Polkovaya Street, although this is only one of the versions.
Left tributary of the Moscow River. Length 7.5 km. enclosed in a pipe. Starting from the Pashensky swamp near Maryina Grove and crossing the central part of the city from north to south (flowed along the modern streets of Streletskaya, Novosuschevskaya, Dostoevsky, 3rd Samotyochny Lane, Samotyochny Square, Samotyochnaya Square, Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Trubnaya Square, Neglinnaya Street, Teatralnaya Square , Manezhnaya Square, Alexander Garden, along Kremlin wall before flowing into the Moscow River), the river had great importance for city life.
In the beginning. XVI century On Neglinka, six ponds were built (Neglinensky ponds), some of which (Samoteka) were lowered into the middle. XVIII century In con. XVIII century Neglinka was put through the canal, and in 1817–1819. enclosed in a pipe for 3 km. By 1966, the second mouth of the Neglinka had been formed, and a collector with a length of approx. 1 km from Teatralnaya Square. under Nikolskaya and Varvarka streets, in the 1970s. a new channel was laid from Trubnaya Square. to st. Okhotny Ryad (over 900 m long).
Mentioned in sources from 1401 as the Neglimna river, in the Book of the Great Drawing, 1627 Neglinn, in a source from the mid-17th century. Neglimna, but later Neglinnaya, Neglinka. The traditional explanation of the name comes from the Neglinn form and sees the Russian as the basis of the name. clay, that is, “a river with a non-clay bottom and banks.” However, the existence of a name with a similar meaning is unlikely due to its lack of information; while denying the clayey nature of the bottom, it does not say anything about its actual nature (sandy, rocky, muddy or some other). One can assume a connection between the name and the dialect word neglinko - swamp, swampy place with springs. Old literature has repeatedly noted the formation of creeks, swamps, swamps on this river, its shallowness, and slow flow.
At the beginning of the 16th century. The waters of Neglinnaya filled the ditch along the Kremlin wall. Stone dams were built on the river, forming a chain of six interconnected ponds, which were used for breeding fish and for putting out fires. Along the banks of the Neglinka there were mills, forges, baths and workshops. There were 4 bridges: Voskresensky (its fragments were discovered during archaeological excavations on Manezhnaya Square in 1994), the 3-span Kuznetsky, the ancient Troitsky and Petrovsky (discovered during the reconstruction of the stage of the Maly Theater).
Neglinnaya received on the right a stream from the Butyrsky Pond, a stream from the Antropov Pits, the Belaya River and the Uspensky Vrazhek, on the left - the Naprudnaya River and a stream from the Daev Pond. In the middle of the 18th century. due to population growth and industrial development, the water in Neglinnaya, already heavily polluted, smelled foul; It was decided to drain part of the ponds, which were called Samoteka.
During the war with the Swedes in 1707-1708. Excavation work was carried out to strengthen the walls of the Kremlin and Kitay-Gorod. During construction, Neglinnaya was transferred to a ditch located approximately where the Alexander Garden railing is now, and its bed was covered with earth, after which bastions were erected there, which were demolished only in 1819-1823.
In 1817-19 Neglinnaya was enclosed in a pipe for 3 km (hence the name Trubnaya Square). However, the collectors often became polluted, not containing the entire volume of water, especially during high waters and floods, which led to flooding of adjacent streets. By 1966, a second estuary was created: a collector was built (about 1 km long, up to 4 m in diameter), stretching from Teatralnaya Square under Nikolskaya and Varvarka streets, which drains the Neglinka waters into the Moscow River (almost 1 km below the old estuary), in the area of the Rossiya Hotel. In the 1970s a new channel (over 900 m long) was laid from Trubnaya Square to Okhotny Ryad Street.
Neglinka is a unique phenomenon. In the sense that everyone knows about this river, but no one has seen it, since it was enclosed in a pipe back in 1819. But, being hidden from human eyes, how many traces Neglinka left in Moscow names! This is Neglinnaya Street, which completely follows the riverbed, and 1-3 Neglinnaya Lanes, and Kuznetsky Bridge, dismantled as a bridge in the already mentioned 1819. But Neglinka’s traces are not limited to them alone. Trubnaya Square is perhaps not the most euphonious name. But it all comes from the same pipe in which Neglinka was imprisoned. Moreover, here it was hidden in a pipe even much earlier than the beginning of the 19th century. Even at the time when the walls of the White City arose, a pipe had to be built in the tower for the flow of water. The area that formed nearby began to be called very simply - the Pipe.
The name Neglinka attracted researchers due to the presence in sources (from the beginning of the 15th century) of variants Neglinna/Neglimna and the names of the area Neglimenye, Zaneglimenye. On this basis, V.N. Toporov (1972) classifies the hydronym as a Baltic substratum, elevating it to the stem *Ne-glim-in-, presumably from the root gilm (cf. Prussian Gilmen, lit. Gelmynas and others (lit. gilme “depth”) This etymology was supported by E.M. Pospelov (1999) as the most realistic: the hydronym Neglimna is interpreted as “a shallow, shallow river.” The opposite point of view: the name Neglinka is associated with the Russian appellative clay and means “a river with a non-clay bottom, shores" (in particular, it was expressed by G.P. Smolitskaya and M.V. Gorbanevsky, 1982). In Russian dialects, for example, in Ryazan, there is a transition from nn to plural: glymyanyy instead of clayey. In addition, in the Oka basin more than once there is a juxtaposition of hydronyms like Glinskaya/Neglinnaya, which provides an additional argument for the possible motivation for the name Neglinka as “a river with a non-clay bottom and banks,” i.e., by the nature of the soil (unlike other places in Moscow, for example, the Glinishchi area in the -not modern Slavyanskaya Square). Another name for the river - Samoteka - refers to a number of names of rivers that flowed from ponds with running water: the water from them flowed “by gravity”.
“...The past passes before me...” Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovsky, “Moscow and Muscovites”
About 140 rivers and streams flow through the territory of modern Moscow. 39 of them have completely open channels, and 40 are completely taken into collectors. One of the most famous is Neglinka or Neglinnaya
The Neglinka is not the largest, but also not the smallest tributary of the Moscow River within the city. It originates in the swamps behind Maryina Roshcha and flows seven and a half kilometers before its confluence with the Moscow River at the Vodovzvodnaya Tower 
The river was first mentioned in city chronicles in 1401. Now it’s hard to believe that the Neglinka was then a deep river in which fish were caught and used as a transport artery. The flow of the river made it possible to build mills on its bed. During floods, the width of the river reached one and a half kilometers and a depth of up to 25 meters
The origin of the name has only versions. Neglinko is a swamp. Neglinn is a river with a sandy bottom. Or Neglimna from “negla” - larch. A river overgrown with these trees. After the confluence of the Neglinka with the Naprudnaya River in the area of the current Garden Ring, the riverbed overflowed into a cascade of natural flowing ponds, from which the river rushed by gravity towards the Kremlin. Hence another name for it - Samoteka. The reliability of any of the versions cannot already be established. And is this authenticity necessary? 
Neglinka is a unique phenomenon. In the sense that everyone knows about this river, but no one has seen it, since the first section of the riverbed was enclosed in a pipe back in 1819. But, being hidden from human eyes, how many traces Neglinka left in Moscow names! This includes Neglinnaya Street, which completely follows the riverbed, and three Neglinnaya lanes. 
Kuznetsky Bridge, dismantled in the same 1819.
All that remains are reconstruction drawings by the Soviet artist and passionate historian Karl Karlovich Lopyalo 
In total, four bridges were thrown across the Neglinka - Kuznetsky, Petrovsky (on the site of the Maly Theater), Voskresensky (near the former Voskresensky Gate of Kitay-Gorod) and Troitsky. The latter is still alive and connects the Trinity Tower with Kutafya 
Trubnaya Square is perhaps not the most euphonious name. But it all comes from the very pipe into which the unfortunate Neglinka was shoved 
They began to “mock” the river even under Peter I at the very beginning of the 1700s, erecting fortifications on the banks of the Neglinka - bolverki, intended to protect the Kremlin. This construction involved changing the natural riverbed and draining one of the riverbed ponds. At the beginning of the 19th century, the bolts were dismantled, but construction Zemlyanoy city required confinement of the channel into a collector. This is where the underground history of the river began
Back in Catherine’s times, it was enclosed in an underground pipe: they drove piles into the riverbed, covered it with a stone vault, laid a wooden floor, arranged street water drains through drainage wells and made an underground sewer under the streets. In addition to the “legal” sewer pipes drawn from the streets for rain and utility water, most wealthy homeowners installed secret underground drains in Neglinka to discharge sewage, instead of transporting them in barrels, as was the case everywhere in Moscow before the sewer system was installed. And all this sewage went into the Moscow River. The police knew this, the homeowners knew about all this, and everyone must have thought: it wasn’t us who started it, it won’t end with us!
The second serious intervention in Neglinka’s life occurred 60 years later:
In the eighties, the virgin integrity of Theater Square had to be briefly violated, and for this reason. The light-water Neglinka River, enclosed in a pipe, due to poor sewerage, became a cesspool of sewage that flowed into the Moscow River and contaminated the water. Over the years, the pipe became clogged, it was never cleaned, and after every big rainfall, water flooded the streets, squares, and the lower floors of houses along Neglinny Proezd. Then the water drained, leaving foul-smelling silt on the street and filling the basement floors with sewage. Years passed like this until they decided to find out the reason. It turned out that the turns (and there were two of them: one at the corner of the Maly Theater, and the other on the square, under the fountain with the figures of the sculptor Vitali) were clogged with the waste of the city. The underground swamps that surrounded the square, as in ancient times, also had no outlet. They began to rebuild Neglinka and opened its vaults 
The third reconstruction of underground sewers was started in the 60s of the last century. The reason for the forced labor was the same as that described by Gilyarovsky. With every heavy downpour, the Trubnaya Square area It was so flooded that water cascaded into the doors of shops and into the lower floors of houses in the area. This happened because Neglinka’s uncleaned underground cesspool, which ran from Samoteka under Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Neglinny Proezd, Teatralnaya Square and under the Alexander Garden all the way to the Moscow River, did not contain the water that overflowed it in rainy weather. It was positively a disaster 
By the beginning of the seventies of the 20th century, new concrete vaults were built, the original sewers were duplicated, which could no longer cope with the passage of floods due to storm wells being tripled everywhere in the city. 
If previously part of the storm and melt water went into the Moscow River along pavements or filtering through the soil, then from asphalt surfaces all precipitation could enter it only through storm drains connected to Neglinka. Of particular concern was the throughput capacity of the reservoir section in front of the wellhead. Therefore, below the Metropol Hotel, the river was divided, and a second underground channel was built with its mouth opposite Balchug 
Neglinka could have undergone a fourth reincarnation. During the reconstruction of Manezhnaya Square in the 90s, one of the projects provided for the extraction of the river into the light of day in the area of \u200b\u200bthe Alexander Garden. But this would require huge excavation and hydraulic works, since the depth of the river collector in this area is more than 7 meters. Fortunately, we limited ourselves to the “decorative” Neglinka along the Kremlin wall 
I was once walking along Neglinnaya and opposite the State Bank and saw a wooden barracks surrounded by a fence in the middle of the street, entered it, met the engineer who was carrying out the work - it turned out that he knew me, and agreed to my request to inspect the work. In the middle of the barracks there was a narrow hole, from which the end of a ladder protruded.
We went down to the Neglinka sewer in the park behind the Theater. Durov on Olympic Avenue. The digger accompanying us first highlighted the slippery and rusty staples from above, and then dived after us, deftly sliding the cast-iron hatch behind him 
Nobody paid attention to our operation - everything was done very quickly: they raised the bars, lowered the stairs. Foul-smelling steam poured out of the hole. Fedya the plumber was the first to climb; the hole, damp and dirty, was narrow, the ladder stood vertically, his back scraped against the wall. The squelching of water and a voice, as if from a crypt, were heard:
- Climb, or something!
No one paid attention to us either. A local resident walking in the park with his dog has most likely long ago become accustomed to the idiots who pull on their OZK boots every evening on an inconspicuous bench in front of the monument and go down into the dungeon 
I was left alone in this walled crypt and walked about ten steps in knee-deep water. Has stopped. There was darkness all around me. The darkness is impenetrable, a complete absence of light. I turned my head in all directions, but my eye could not discern anything.
The collector doesn't really have any lighting. We were saved by headlamps and a powerful spotlight in the hands of a digger. In a narrow tunnel, this amount of light was quite enough 
It was not difficult for me to find two brave souls who decided to take this trip. One of them is the unlicensed plumber Fedya, who earned his living by day work, and the other is a former janitor, respectable and thorough. His duty was to lower the ladder, lower us into the cesspool between Samoteka and Trubnaya Square and then meet us at the next flight and lower the ladder for our exit. Fedya's duty is to accompany me into the dungeon and shine
We easily found an advertisement on the Internet about this excursion into the belly of the city. It was more difficult to sign up for it. There are more than enough people interested, and the groups consist of only six people. The big one will simply stretch out and can get lost in the numerous labyrinths of tunnels. And the interesting story of the guide, drowned out by the sound of water and the echoing sounds of car tires on sewer hatches, can only be heard when you are close to the narrator 
We walked forward through deep water, occasionally avoiding waterfalls of runoff from the streets that hummed under our feet. Suddenly a terrible roar, as if from collapsing buildings, made me shudder. It was a cart that passed over us. More and more often carriages thundered over my head
The roar of car wheels, sliding over hatches and gratings at great speed, was truly frightening at first. There was a feeling that something was constantly exploding above. Then you start to get used to it, and after a couple of kilometers the collector goes to a considerable depth, and the noise from above stops coming at all 
This was a continuation of my constant work on the study of the Moscow slums, with which Neglinka had connections, as I had to learn in the brothels of Grachevka and Tsvetnoy Boulevard
For us it was a very unusual, but nevertheless quite planned excursion 
I moved forward further and heard a noise similar to the roar of a waterfall. Indeed, just next to me a waterfall was roaring, scattering millions of dirty splashes, barely illuminated by the pale yellowish light from the hole in the street pipe. It turned out to be a sewage drain from a side hole in the wall
Nothing gets into the modern Neglinka except spring water, which enters the riverbed through special ceramic pipes. According to the guide, this water is safe to drink. We didn't dare do this. But visually the purity of the influx did not raise any doubts. However, diggers say that several years ago a pipe suddenly came down from a restaurant on Samotyochnaya Square, through which sewage began to flow. This lasted for a week, after which the diggers plugged the pipe with foam. One can only guess what happened next in this restaurant. 
A few minutes later we came across a rise under our feet. There was a pile of mud here that was especially thick, and apparently there was something piled up underneath the dirt... We climbed through the pile, lighting it with a light bulb. I poked my foot, and something springed under my boot... We stepped over the pile and moved on. In one of these drifts, I was able to see the half-covered corpse of a huge Great Dane. It was especially difficult to get over the last drift before exiting to Trubnaya Square, where the stairs awaited us. Here the mud was especially thick, and something kept slipping under our feet. It was scary to think about it
In the 20s of the last century, Moscow was very crime city. The settlements inhabited by working people were especially famous. Those who lost at cards were indeed sometimes thrown into Neglinka. Now, of course, there is no such nightmare. But there are still plenty of idiots. True, they are afraid to go further than the ventilation shafts 
We walked for a long time, in places plunging into deep mud or unclimbable, stinking liquid mud, in places bending over, since the drifts of mud were so high that it was impossible to walk straight - I had to bend down, and yet at the same time I reached the arch with my head and shoulders. My feet sank into the mud, sometimes bumping into something dense. All this was covered in liquid mud, it was impossible to see, and even before that it was
The bottom of the collector is only slightly washed with clean sand. There was no longer any stench left except the musty smell of damp brick. Spring floods and flash floods, when the water rises to the very roof of the collector, wash away all the pollution that accidentally gets through the storm grates 
I hit my head on something, raised my hand and felt the wet, cold, warty, mucus-covered stone vault and nervously pulled my hand away...
Stalagmites are still formed from groundwater filtering through ancient masonry. But they don’t have time to petrify, since their lifespan is maximum from spring to spring 
I pulled my hunting boots higher, buttoned up my leather jacket and began to descend. It was getting creepy. Finally, the sound of water and squelching was heard. A cold, bone-piercing dampness gripped me
In fact, it's quite warm in the collector today. The heating network pipes laid under the city involuntarily heat up the collector in winter. In summer, hot air does not penetrate deep into the wells. Thus, the temperature fluctuates around +10°C all year round. What do common champignons use for their own reproduction? 
But there is excess moisture in the collector. I had to hold my breath while taking pictures so that the exhaled steam wouldn’t cloud the picture. 
In some places the collector has been considerably damaged by modern “architects” 
It's a pity. This building is unique. Nowhere else in the world are there such pipes, which in cross-section resemble a chicken egg standing at the sharp end. Try crushing it with a simple press of your palm. Not sure it's going to happen. Likewise, these collectors withstood the foundations of newly erected buildings, armored parades, and even bombings during the Great Patriotic War without the slightest damage. 
It must be said that Neglinka is now being watched quite closely. Once every three months, a special commission thoroughly studies the condition of all sections of the underground riverbed. Various repairs and cleanings are carried out as necessary. Official assistance to city services is provided by diggers 
We walked in this stench to the first well and came across a lowered ladder. I raised my head and was delighted by the blue sky.
- Well, are you okay? Get out! - a voice boomed from above
It’s hard to imagine that this grille of the ventilation shaft right in the middle of Trubnaya Square is the exit from the underground river 
While serving in the editorial office of “Evening Moscow”, Vladimir Alekseevich Gilyarovsky visited all underground tunnels Neglinka, despite the fact that the height of some of them does not exceed a meter, and the writer was two meters tall. In addition to the book about Moscow and its inhabitants, Gilyarovsky wrote a series of essays about the underground life of the capital, thanks to which in 1926 the Moscow Council adopted a resolution to clean up the Neglinka riverbed clogged with rubbish. The writer himself called this document the epilogue of his articles in the citywide newspaper 
In general, something like this... 
