Treasure Hunt
In unstable times, whether it was a revolution, wars or dispossession, some secret dungeon or land was considered the most reliable place to store valuables. The acquired good was transferred to chests, barrels, and they buried their treasures somewhere in a deep forest in a secret place.
This method of storing more or less large amounts of money was considered in the order of things until the middle of the last century. However, it was far from always possible to return for riches, often no one except the one who hid the treasure knew exactly where it was buried, and the treasures remained lying and waiting in the wings. A considerable number of such forgotten coin caches on the territory of Russia are scattered from the Far East to Siberia. We decided to recall a few legendary treasures that so far no one has been able to find.
(Total 10 photos)
1. Treasure of Khan Yediger-Magmet
Where to look: Kazan, Lake Kaban.
Back in 1552, Ivan the Terrible decided to take Kazan. At first, the Tatar soldiers tried to attack the troops besieging the fortress of the Kazan Khanate, but after some time they realized that they could not resist the troops of Grozny. Then Chapkun Otuchev, who was in charge of the khan's treasury, decided to hide all the khan's valuables in a safe place. Lake Kaban seemed to be the most suitable for him: the jewels were rolled into barrels, taken out of the fortress at night and thrown into the lake. During the assault on the city, everyone who knew about the exact location of the treasures died. And untold riches still lie at the bottom, under a layer of multi-meter silt that has grown over hundreds of years.
2. Treasure of Napoleon
Where to look: Zhernovka village, lakes Kasplya, Svaditskoye, Velisto; lake Mutnoe in the Demidovsky district of the Smolensk region, Semlevsky lake.
Leaving Moscow, Napoleon took with him several convoys with gold, valuables and a collection of ancient weapons. According to various archival data, in total he took out about 18 poods of gold, 325 poods of silver and countless other valuables. However, he never brought the trophies to the appointed place. The periodic attacks of the Russian troops and the approaching cold forced the French to start throwing off the loot in order to increase the speed of the army. Along the way, valuables were buried in the ground and flooded in nearby lakes. Historians suggest that Napoleon continued to drag carts at least as far as the Berezina River. The first such treasure was found near the Nara River.
3. Kolchak's gold
Where to look: the village of Taiga, Lake Baikal, the Tura River in the Tyumen Region.
At the beginning of the First World War, Russia's gold reserves were redirected to Kazan. The head of the White movement, Admiral Kolchak, in turn, took him out of Kazan and transported him by train to Siberia. On the way, the train was attacked, during which the attackers each time stole some part of the treasure. Part of the same, according to eyewitnesses, Kolchak hid. The Bolsheviks got only half of the exported stock. Gold bars with a total weight of approximately 200 tons lie somewhere in chests hidden in Siberia.
4. Treasure of Sigismund III
Where to look: Moscow region, Mozhaisk, Aprelevka.
The Polish troops that invaded Russia in 1604 stuffed their chests with anything of any value. As a result, 923 freight wagons were collected for good, which were sent along the Mozhaisk road to Poland. But all the treasures disappeared almost without a trace, not even reaching Smolensk. According to one version, this happened because the sender of the valuables himself had views of them and planned to stay in Russia. The records mention that they were buried not far from a graveyard. But what exactly it was and where it was, it was not possible to establish, therefore the geography of the location of the treasure is rather blurred, which dragged out the search for many, many years.
5. Treasure of Emelyan Pugachev
Where to look: along the route of the troops - Orenburg, Berda, Yaitsky town, Samara, Kazan, Simbirsk, Ufa, Magnitnaya fortress, Iletsk defense, Beloretsk plants, Zlatoust, Orsk, Osa, Izhevsk plant, Botkinsky plant, Tsivilsk, Kurmysh, Saransk, Penza.
During the uprising, Emelyan Pugachev's "treasury" was regularly replenished with the values of estates and property of local landowners. Prioritizing the mobility of the rebel troops, Pugachev periodically hid wealth along the way. According to rumors, he did it in a conspicuous place, so that later it would be easier to find. Some of these caches were discovered in the vicinity of Orenburg. But the main treasures continue to excite the imagination of treasure hunters, hiding somewhere under a layer of earth or water.
6. Treasure from the ship "Varyagin"
Where to look: in the Ussuriysky Bay, between the alignment of the Three Stones, Mount Vargli and Sukhodol Bay.
In 1906, the Varyagin cargo-passenger ship, en route from Vladivostok to Sukhodol Bay, collided with a mine left after the Russo-Japanese War and sank. On board were 250 passengers and 60 thousand rubles in gold, along with "especially valuable cargo." Only 15 managed to escape, including the captain. In 1913, he made an attempt to find and raise the ship. The ship was found, but the ship-lifting operation turned out to be too expensive, so only part of the valuable cargo was pulled to the surface. The gold remained lying in the holds of the ship at the bottom of the bay.
7. Treasure of Hetman Mazepa
Where to look: Baturin, the place where Mazepa crossed the Dnieper, Mazepa's castle - Goncharovka, the country palace - on the Porosyuchka farm.
In October 1708, Mazepa was supposed to meet with Charles XII, having crossed the Desna. In order to go light, before leaving Baturin, he partially buried his innumerable treasures. He tried to smuggle other parts in the convoy, which followed along with the troops to Karl, and also to hide in other places known to him alone. One of these attempts, when crossing to the other side of the Dnieper, ended with the fact that some boats with valuable cargo simply sank.
8. Treasure of Count Rostopchin
Where to look: the Voronovo sanatorium at the 61st kilometer of the Starokaluga Highway, 37 kilometers from the Moscow Ring Road.
During the war of 1812, the Voronovo estate, located 37 km from Moscow, became the residence of the Governor-General of Moscow, Count Rostopchin. He brought works of art and various valuables into it, turning the estate into a kind of miniature Versailles. After the arrival of Napoleon's troops in Moscow, he set fire to his estate, staging everything in such a way that supposedly all the wealth he had accumulated was destroyed. In fact, there were underground passages on the territory of the estate, through which, presumably, all the good was taken out and hidden in the district.
9. Treasure of the Smolensk Bank
Where to look: the village of Otnosovo in the Smolensk region.
Before the invasion of German troops in Smolensk, it was decided to remove all funds and valuables from bank vaults. Wealth was sent to Vyazma on eight trucks, but the convoy came under fire and only 5 cars reached the nearest settlement. There are different versions of how further events developed, but the most popular is the assumption that gold and silver were buried. This theory is supported by the facts of finding individual coins of the 1924 issue near the village of Otnosovo. And the whole treasure lies somewhere in a secluded place.
10. Treasure of Ataman Semenov
Where to look: near the Russian-Chinese border, Dauria region.
Preparing an escape from Chita, Ataman Semyonov decided to take out the stock of the Russian Empire, which was brought by the Kappel army, and hide it in the Daurian steppe. The valuable cargo was delivered to the Dauria station and safely buried, but during the return of the Cossacks to the armored train they were attacked and all those who were initiated into the secret of the location of the treasure died. According to the assumptions of counterintelligence officers, the size of the territory on which the treasure may be located is 150 square kilometers. The treasure itself is estimated at about $500 million.
Keywords: Treasure