Fortress Trogzund with dungeons: address, photo, perspective

It's amazing how many mysterious places on the map of Russia lie aside from the beaten tourist trails, historical monuments, day after day, steadily turning into ruins! One of these places is the fortress Trogzund, located on the outskirts of the small town of Vysotsk, in the Vyborgsky Bay of the Leningrad Region.

Trongsund Lost in the Woods

Dense forest vegetation almost entirely absorbed the remains of ancient fortifications.

But once a formidable fortress was thought of by Peter the Great during the Northern War. It was supposed that it would become a powerful fort for the defense of Vyborg and the capital of the empire, St. Petersburg, under construction, from potential enemies. Now, few know the history of this majestic stronghold. Its intricate mystical history dates back to the 18th century.

"Iron Will of Peter"

In 1710 Russian troops in the course of a fierce military campaign took Vyborg, formerly a Swedish possession. Hence the troops of Charles XII repeatedly threatened the young Russian capital, and taking Vyborg was an urgent necessity for Tsar Peter. As a result of the victory and the signing of the Nystad Peace Treaty, the crown of the Russian Empire has grown strategically important new lands that need reliable protection. The Russian emperor decided to build a defensive redoubt in the Trogzund Strait, which from the sea side would cover Vyborg, which was recovered from the Swedes.

Admiral Fyodor Apraksin in late March 1710 made a report to the tsar that a place was found where the enemy could be met with dignity.

The town-fortress of Trongzund was laid where the strait is only 180 meters wide. But the enemy did not stick to these edges, and the further development of events forced Peter to shift his attention to the strengthening of Kronstadt.

New threats - a new life of the fort

During the Crimean War, the powerful forces of the Anglo-French squadron blocked Russian ships in the Baltic Sea. After the Baltic campaign, the government of the Russian Empire, in order to avoid further potential threats from the great European powers, found it necessary to renew and strengthen hopelessly obsolete fortifications on the far approaches to the capital. So, in place of the Trogzund buildings of Peter's times in the sixties of the XIX century, they planned to erect new defensive fortifications, whose ruins have reached our days.

Never shot a fighting fortress

Large-scale construction on the site of Petrovsky Trogzund on the island of Uuransaari (now - Vysotsky) unfolded in 1864. Four sides of the new pentagonal fortress Were reinforced with gun batteries with the latest weapon for those times - long-range rifled guns, the fifth side was a powerful ditch. Under the redoubts are warehouses of food, powder cellars, barracks, kitchens - the necessary components of the military bivouac. To connect all of its parts were built passages - ground and underground.

In the seventies, the reinforcement and renovation of the redoubt continued: an internal road was built, the combat power was reinforced with new weapons. But already in the eighties the strategy of the defense of the Baltic was sharply revised, and the fortress of Trongzund was again considered obsolete, not meeting the demands of the time. In the first years of the twentieth century, it was still maintained in combat condition, but the battles of the First World War did not affect it.

Winter War

The Vyborg lands, together with the fortress of Trongzund, which by that time had long been inactive, had retired to Finland in 1918. More than 20 years have passed. In the winter of 1939-1940 on the territory of the fortress, the only time in the history of its existence was fighting between Finnish and Soviet troops. The Finns desperately defended their Uuras (then the name of these places), but the units of the Red Army managed to break their resistance, and the territory once again became Russian, i.e. Soviet.

In the course of these cruel battles, the machine-gunner Kuzma Vysotsky performed a heroic feat, in honor of which the Finnish Uuras was renamed Vysotsk in the late forties. Forty subsequent years, until the end of the eighties, the fortress of Trongzund was considered a border outpost in which the garrison was located. Then the maintenance here garrison was considered unnecessary, and he was finally taken out of these places. The fortress began to gradually turn into ruins, and the strength of Vysotsk was steadily declining. The number of residents of modern Vysotsk slightly exceeds 1000 people.

The brother of Peter and Paul Fortress

Now inexorably collapsing fortress Trogzund with dungeons, remains Rock walls, powder cellars and vaulted brick corridors attract those who are heartbroken for the historical heritage of their country.

Experts of Russian fortification science note the uniqueness of this citadel, built and equipped with the latest military equipment of the sixties and seventies of the XIX century. They believe that Trongzund was created in accordance with the same principles as the famous Peter and Paul Fortress of St. Petersburg: the location of the rubbish (hidden underground passages leading beyond the ramparts), the caponiers (vaulted structures located at the bottom of the fortress moat), gunpowder in both Fortresses exactly coincide. The creation of Trungzund embodied the best achievements of engineering thought of his time.

Time travel

While there continues unending debate about whether the object of what value, federal or regional, is a fortification, it silently dies on the outskirts of Vysotsk. Only a few romantics who are close to travel not only in space, but also in time, visit the fortress of Trongzund. How to get to the quiet Vysotsk, located 120 kilometers from the northern capital, everyone knows, but in order to find in the wild thickets left in the ground remnants of a once powerful battle citadel, you need to be patient and very attentive. Deeper into the forest, approaching the urban outskirts, you can stumble upon the remains of an old quarry, from where they took rock for the fortification shafts. Away from her, on the lawn, there is a dip in the ground leading to the underground tunnel. Armed with a flashlight, the travelers descend, and, after passing the underground passage, get on a rocky platform. From here you can see the view of Trogzund - the fortress, where A well-preserved fortified ditch, whose walls are lined with granite blocks and where it is still possible to see arched entrance gates, the remains of brick walls with window-loopholes and feel the former power of this structure.

Potato storage

Walking through the vaulted dungeons of Trongzund alone and without a lantern is not safe. Wooden decking of the floors has long rotted away, brickwork collapses, locals use the ruins as a garbage dump, and behind one of the surviving rock walls there are garages.

Impressive tourists, hitting in gloomy dungeons and lighting the vaults, can be horrified at first instant - in many places the chains hang from the ceiling. Visitors say that the imagination will immediately create terrible pictures of interrogations with addiction, torture and inhuman punishment. However, there were no such horrors in the peaceful life of Fort Troggund. The fortress in Russia on the island of Vysotsky did not know the fighting and, unlike his elder brother, the Peter and Paul Fortress, was never a prison. And hanging from the sooty ceilings of the dungeons of the chain - nothing more than the attributes of a potato warehouse: during the Soviet era, underground galleries of a monument of military architecture were used to store potatoes.

Save can not be destroyed ...

The neighborhood of Vysotsk is a majestic northern nature, gloomy spruce forests, quiet waters of the strait, so narrow that it is somewhat like a river, sandy beaches. Trungzund is becoming more and more immersed in this primordial state. The fortress, photo of which is published by tourists who visited it, day after day is surrendered under the onslaught of the forest and human neglect. Not indifferent local historians make efforts to preserve this monument, they call to stop its destruction. Several years ago, an examination of the state of the facility was carried out, and the conclusions drawn on its basis are disappointing. Walls of trees, hewn from granite, can stand still for several decades, but brick vaulted galleries are destroyed every day.

Unfortunately, the bureaucratic confusion does not allow seriously to restore the fortress, and after all, reviving it to life, it would be possible to create on the map of the Leningrad region an interesting cognitive touristic route with elements of an extreme: Uuras-Vysotsk, fortress Trogzund.