Mystical Kiev

Under the most real mystical cover is the historical center of Kiev. They say that this city is almost one of the most mysterious places on the planet, where there is a transition from our world to another, parallel... the XX century was unlucky for Kiev.

During wars, revolutions, and repressions, thousands of citizens died or found themselves far from their hometown. So the City, as Mikhail Bulgakov simply and meaningfully called Kiev, has changed unrecognizably. However, there are still interesting houses in it, places that are not as widely known as the Kiev Pechersk Lavra or St. Sophia of Kiev, but without which it is difficult to imagine the historical center of the City.

Strange and mysterious

The peculiar hilly relief of the city pushed Kiev architects to tricks during construction, which caused houses to appear that had different storeys. The most famous of them is on Trekhsvyatitelskaya Street, 11. You look at this house from the street — an ordinary two-story mansion of the beginning of the XX century. However, as soon as you enter the entrance, you suddenly realize that the stairwell goes not only up, but... down! After entering the front door and going down, you can go out into the courtyard. And only then it becomes clear that the building has as many as five floors. How can we not remember about the tricks of the unclean, about the "bad apartment" described by Bulgakov. They say that this house is not very habitable either. Perhaps that is why the tenants are moving out of it and now it has almost completely turned into an office.

Well, the buildings on Yaroslavov Val Street (Bolshaya Podvalnaya), 14a and 146, next to the well-known theater "Suzirya", are associated with a Kiev witch. These luxurious apartment buildings belonged to the rich Leonid Rodzianko (a cousin of the chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Empire Mikhail Rodzianko). The entrance to one of them — with a gray facade, where the bank is now located-is framed by two identical sculptures of girls with long hair. They have a portrait resemblance to a real person-the famous witch and fortune teller Motrei Varnali in Kiev at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. It was she who, they say, predicted L. Rodzianko the coming troubles of the empire literally on the eve of the First World War. Leonid left for America in a prosperous 1913. Not everyone was so prescient…

Roll call of evil spirits

On Gogolevskaya Street there is a house number 23, known to Kiev residents as "The House with cats". On the facade of the building of the beginning of the XX century, you can really see two cats, two owls and... But about the most interesting thing-a little later. The residential house in the Art Nouveau style with Gothic elements was created according to the project of the wonderful Kiev architect Vladimir Bessmertny. The owner of the house, General Ferdinand Yagimovsky, was reputed to be a man with oddities who knew the devil. So, the large Gothic window of the first floor is framed by two bas-relief cats. On the second floor, we see creepy faces. And in the center — owls and again strange faces. The most interesting thing is at the top, where passers-by do not look. On the edge of the figured roof sits a real devil, though small, and makes a snide face. He looks… And where to? In the distance, in the direction of your brother, or girlfriend-call him (or her) as you wish.

After all, just a few blocks from the "House with cats" there is another wonderful mystical house in the Renaissance style. It rises on Bolshaya Zhytomyr Street, 8. It is very strange that not everyone pays attention to the slyly grinning gargoyle on the corner of the house — a real monster in the style of monsters Notre-Dame de Paris. According to the Kiev legend, the owner of the house, the spiritualist and warlock Joseph Rogovsky, ordered such a "decoration" to the architect Bobrusov. After all, it was in the corner apartment where Rogovsky himself lived that spiritualistic seances and meetings of very strange people of different ages and classes took place.

However, the "diabolical" houses on Gogolevskaya and Bolshaya Zhytomyr are only two vertices of the sinister triangle that I discovered in my hometown. Its third peak, which closes the ominous figure on the map of Kiev, is, of course. the famous "House with chimeras" by architect Gorodetsky is a building with a strange fate, which did not bring happiness to its residents, including Pan Vladislav himself. I told in detail about the mysteries of the demonic triangle, the fates of people and the Gorodetsky family associated with it in my book "The City with chimeras" ("Misto z chimeras").

The Architect's Chimeras

The history of the famous "House with Chimeras" is well known. Having bought a plot of land on a slope, Gorodetsky set out to build an unusual house there. His colleagues warned the architect that this is technically impossible: quicksand soils, height difference, steepness of the slope… Everything made the plan impossible. However, Gorodetsky made a bet with famous architects Alexander Kobelev and Vladimir Leontovich that in two years he would be able to build a building using materials that were new at that time: cement and concrete. The architect won the bet and on the appointed day invited friends and colleagues to taste a boar on a spit in his own apartment in a new house.

The structure amazed everyone. According to the sketches of Vladislav Gorodetsky, the Italian Elio Sala, who lived in Kiev for a long time, decorated the facades and roofs of reinforced concrete with fantastic sculptures made of high-quality cement. Elephants and rhinos, roe deer and lizards, a crocodile, a panther tormenting an eagle, and a dragon sneaking up on an eagle, even a snake descending down the corner of a building-everything fit on an extraordinary house. And on the roof sat strange frogs, naiads with nets, water lilies hung their leaves… So Gorodetsky, a passionate hunter, as if foreseeing his future safari in Africa, told about him and his other trips. The same unimaginable decor of the heads of animals, inhabitants of the seabed and even animal skulls is also inside the building, in the rooms and on the stairs.

All together, these decorations make a scary impression. The facade of the "House with chimeras", facing Bankovaya Street. 10, seems to be just the front side of a strange mansion. However, it is worth going around the building and looking at it from the side of the I. Franko Theater, as it will appear as a multi-storey impregnable fortress. And quite gloomy, especially in gloomy weather. And the fate of the house is not very cheerful. The building brought the architect not profits, but losses, it was mortgaged and sold. After the revolution, the house was never residential, profitable. What kind of organizations were there not in it…

Other riddles

The oddities of the small Bankova Street do not end there. A stone's throw from the "House with Chimeras" is the well-known "House of the Weeping Widow". The facade of the building faces Krugluniversitetskaya Street. They say that the shadow of a disconsolate widow still walks in this house on dark nights. The house is uninhabited, so, probably, only the security guards are afraid of the silhouette of a lady in empty corridors. It is interesting that the stone women's faces on the facade of this building, made in the Art Nouveau style, "cry" for a long time after rain and in cloudy weather. Wet traces under the eyes of sculptural ornaments, even on dry days, lead to bewilderment of passers-by.

Now two more iconic houses in Kiev are being emptied and destroyed. Apparently, the evil force associated with these houses affects their fate.

Yaroslavov Val Street is already familiar to us, it is at this address that the most famous building is located, which is called "The Baron's Castle" or "The House of Baron Shteingel". Baron Shteingel, a wonderful man, really owned a house in Kiev, but — next door, at number three. A notable building on the corner, with a spire and fancy decorations, was built at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. Its Gothic appearance and paired figures on the facade are striking — winged devils with arms-wings and legs-paws with claws. Animal "faces" look angrily at passers-by. Once there was a Czech club in this house, Yaroslav Hasek used to come here.

They say that a tipsy Hashek somehow cursed the building and its past and future inhabitants. After the revolution, the apartments were turned into communal apartments, and the house began to collapse. So it stands, dilapidated, waiting for the owner.

"Richard the Lionheart Castle" is a well-known house on the second most popular street in Kiev, Andreevsky Descent. He was cursed in his heart by the St. Petersburg architect Robert Marfeld, because the project of this building was stolen from him by a certain Dmitry Orlov.

The businessman built a really beautiful house, but he also deceived the builders without paying them. Only later it became known about the curse of the author of the project. The unclean Orlov was shot by unknown people at the threshold of the"Castle". His widow hastily sold the apartment house, but all the subsequent owners of its tenants complained of terrible groans and creaks in the apartments at night.

I myself, as a very young man, visited this house in the early 1970s, and I can confirm the eerie impression of strange sounds in it. They say that the restless soul of the swindler Orlov does not give anyone peace... Nowadays, because of property disputes, the famous Kiev house is abandoned.

We have told only about some of the houses of the city, but how many mysteries still lurk in stolny Kiev…