Babolovskaya Tsar Bath. Manufacturing technology of the king bath Huge stone baths

Sometimes you look on the Internet and suddenly come across 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 about making something like this. And why this product is not widely advertised as a technological achievement of our ancestors is not clear to me. 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 the “Babolovskaya Bowl”, “Bath Russian Empire", "Granite Masterpiece" and "Eighth Wonder of the World". Meanwhile, you will not find it in any popular guide to St. Petersburg and its suburbs.

Let's talk about it in more detail...

In Tsarskoe Selo, on the outskirts of Babolovsky Park, there are the ruins of the Babolovsky Palace.

In the southwest of the city of Pushkin, far from tourist routes, the very last of the imperial parks is located. Compared to Alexandrovsky or Ekaterininsky, which are replete with elegant architectural structures and sculptures, Babolovsky Park looks more than modest.

The history 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, received its name from the nearby Finnish village of Pabola, which has not survived to this day), in three miles from Tsarskoye Selo, among swamps and lowlands overgrown with forest, Prince Grigory Alexandrovich Potemkin built a manor with a small landscape garden.

If you look through the wall gap inside the octagonal tower, you 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 design of I. Neelov. Before this, there was a wooden manor in its place. The architect gave the stone building a “Gothic” look: windows with pointed ends, crenellated parapets. The octagonal tower with a hipped roof also gave the palace the appearance of Gothic buildings. A large marble bathtub was installed in the main hall for bathing on hot days. The 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 with a dam. Directly behind the mansion there 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 silver willows, whose age reaches one and a half hundred years.

Initially cleared only small area near the palace, and everywhere around there was a continuous spruce forest. There was also a ditch flowing through it with a clean, very cold water, and there were huge burbots in it. They called it “monk’s”: supposedly in the grotto from which it flowed, there stood the figure of a monk. Expansion of the park began in the mid-19th century. Then they began to drain the surrounding swamps, uproot old trees, and in their place plant new young oaks, maples, lindens and birches. They paved roads and cut clearings for walking and riding in carriages.

Architect-decorator Rondi was called from Paris to present a project for creating a public entertainment complex in Babolovsky Park. The new park was supposed to be replete with attractions, fountains and waterfalls. But, having received an estimate of expenses, the emperor abandoned the idea. In order to “save face”, it was announced that the place was intended for secluded walks and enjoying the beauty of the surrounding nature.

In 1783, near the palace it was broken english garden. On the northern facade of the palace there was a Big (or Babolovsky) pond, formed by the Kuzminka River after the construction of a dam on it; to the south of the palace there was a Mirror (or Silver) pond. The palace experienced a rebirth after reconstruction carried out by V.P. Stasov in 1824-1825.

Catherine's grandson Alexander1 loved this place, and allegedly had intimate dates here. Alexander remodeled the palace and ordered a giant granite bathtub instead of white marble. The compositional center of the palace was the oval hall, the size of which the architect significantly increased in order to accommodate a new bathtub.

A unique pool made of a granite monolith, holding 8,000 buckets of water, was ordered by engineer Betancourt to the famous St. Petersburg stonemason Samson Sukhanov, known for the fact that he supervised the production of the Rostral columns on the spit of Vasilievsky Island and took part in the creation of the pedestal of the monument to Minin and Pozharsky in Moscow. The master agreed to cut out the bathtub for 16,000 rubles. A block of red granite interspersed with labradorite in greenish tones, weighing more than 160 tons, was delivered from one of the Finnish islands and polished on site for ten years (1818-1828). The bathtub has unique dimensions: height 196 cm, depth 152 cm, diameter 533 cm, weight 48 tons. It was first installed and then built around the wall. A cast-iron staircase with railings, equipped with viewing platforms, led to the pool. All parts were cast at the iron foundry of C. Byrd.

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 unnecessary (120 tons). The work took 10 years and was completed on time with the most high quality. The result is a polished granite bathtub: height 196 cm, depth 152 cm, diameter 533 cm, weight 48 tons. Data on a displacement of 8 thousand buckets, according to calculated data - 12 tons of water.

At the same time, the craftsmen demonstrated an amazing sense of 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 critic, professor J. Zembitsky said that “this work of a Russian artist is all the more worthy of attention since nothing so colossal from granite has been known since the time of the Egyptians.”

Architect Stasov wrote: “On the occasion of the highest order to make a stone dome, instead of the intended wooden ceiling above the oval hall, built around the granite bathtub placed at the Babolovsky pavilion, it became necessary:

1. Thicken the foundations and walls in proportion to the burden and expansion of such a dome and for this purpose.

2. Break down the remaining part of the former hall and some part of the adjacent walls of the pavilion with their foundations..."

The architect completed the work in 1829, preserving the Gothic appearance of the structure with lancet windows and a crenellated attic. The facades of the palace were plastered, decorated with stone and painted brown.

The 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 deserves attention all the more because nothing so colossal from 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 it was subjected to severe bombing.

The unique Babolovsky Palace was damaged during the war. Its stone vaults collapsed. Only one bath, which is almost 200 years old, is perfectly preserved. During the Second World War, the Germans were going to take it out as a rare exhibit, but they couldn’t. And then they had no time for it anymore.

This object, popularly called the Tsar Bath, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records, but is still not recognized as a museum exhibit. The authorities treat this unique object, carved out of granite, like garbage...

The age difference between the St. Petersburg and Egyptian masterpieces is, of course, enormous. If the sarcophagus in the Cheops pyramid 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 size, weight and processing technique of the bathtub are surprising. Russian stonemasons did not have to create anything like this either before the creation of the Tsar Bath at the end of the 19th century, or after it. Even modern craftsmen with advanced technologies and appropriate granite processing equipment will not be able to complete such an order.

It is curious that modern scientists, after carefully studying the sarcophagus inside the Cheops pyramid, 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 many versions. The same situation is happening with the Tsar Bath! It is fraught with no less mysteries than the Egyptian sarcophagus.

Initially, the block of red granite interspersed with green labradorite, from which they were going to cut out the bathtub, weighed more than 160 tons. After completion of work, weight finished bath amounted to 48 tons. Even in modern times, this is a large figure, comparable to the weight of a dozen elephants. Not every modern technology capable of lifting this load.

Contemporaries are puzzled by the fact that there is no drain hole in the Bathtub, and there are also no technical capabilities for supplying and heating water. The “hole” at the bottom of the bathtub does not in any way resemble a 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 cool off in cool water. Since august persons, especially ladies, were not supposed to be naked in public, they could do their refreshment in this pool. Why is the pool not made of polypropylene? - Yes, because there were no other materials except granite then. Why wasn't the water heated? - Well, because this pool was planned to be used only in the summer and only for cooling.

And the granite bath was a kind of font with constantly cool or even cold water. Such a thickness of granite absorbs heat for a very long time; one might say, it is a kind of cold accumulator. Here we must remember that the next Tsar Nikolai Pavlovich vacationed in the summer not in Tsarskoe, but in Peterhof (a cottage in Alexandria). And there were many opportunities to swim. Although an interesting pavilion was set up for the ladies on hot days - Tsaritsyn on Olga's Pond. A different air cooling system was used there.

The second version is “Masonic”. Its supporters consider the Babolovsky palace with the bowl as the future main Masonic temple. At the same time, “experts” see numerous Masonic signs in the decorations of the palace. This version does not fit well with the fact that in 1822 Alexander1 issued the highest rescript “On the destruction of Masonic lodges and all kinds of secret societies" It’s hard to believe that Alexander1, when destroying the lodges, left one for himself.

There is a third version, humorous and 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-distance space communications..”

Version four: according to the original plan, in all likelihood, the Bath should have had a drain. It was planned to supply and drain water by gravity using appropriate valves (this can be seen from the diagram). But then perhaps they were afraid to drill in case it might crack!

By the way, many people wonder how they heated the water? After all, to fill such a stone bowl you need almost 8,000 buckets of water, which is not at all small, and even if you pour warm water, then while the bathtub is filling, it will already have cooled down.

There is an assumption that a fire was made from below and, while heating the granite, the water was gradually heated. Indeed, there is a niche under the bathtub. Full of rubbish, unfortunately, but it is clear that the king bathtub stands on 4 granite cubes and there is a small distance from the floor. But this is really a short distance. There is not enough firewood to heat a bath of water. Moreover, if you look closely, then Bottom part The king of the bath is completely unprocessed. There are many places on it where soot from kindling would fall and the granite here would be very black, and it would be impossible to clean it. And the room is small, if you light a fire in it, the whole room will be filled with smoke and it will be very difficult to breathe, not to mention water procedures

The Tsar Bath continues a series of famous, but useless, objects. 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 interior of a dilapidated palace.

Since the fall of 2014, the Babolovsky Palace has been surrounded wooden fence, there is a guard booth with a guard inside and the entrance is closed to visitors and tourists. Categorically! For restoration.

And a few simple questions:
- How “was a granite block weighing more than 160 tons delivered from one of the Finnish islands”? Almost 30 km over rough terrain.
- The work was done, naturally, by hand, only a stone, a hammer and a chisel, and, of course, “by eye,” albeit 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 their stereotyped thinking, are not able to understand.

Having read quite a lot about St. Petersburg and its suburbs, having a good library on this topic, I read this for the first time most interesting article. So I decided to share it with the respected community. Maybe some of the residents of St. Petersburg saw this unique bathtub with their own eyes?

This artifact is also called the “Babolovskaya Bowl”, “Bathtub of the Russian Empire”, “Granite Masterpiece” and “Eighth Wonder of the World”. Meanwhile, you will not find it in any popular guide to St. Petersburg and its suburbs.

Let's talk about it in more detail...

In Tsarskoe Selo, on the outskirts of Babolovsky Park, there are the ruins of the Babolovsky Palace.

In the southwest of the city of Pushkin, far from tourist routes, the very last of the imperial parks is located. Compared to Alexandrovsky or Ekaterininsky, which are replete with elegant architectural structures and sculptures, Babolovsky Park looks more than modest.

If you look through the wall gap inside the octagonal tower, you 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 design of I. Neelov. Before this, there was a wooden manor in its place. The architect gave the stone building a “Gothic” look: windows with pointed ends, crenellated parapets. The octagonal tower with a hipped roof also gave the palace the appearance of Gothic buildings. A large marble bathtub was installed in the main hall for bathing on hot days. The 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 with a dam. Directly behind the mansion there 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 silver willows, whose age reaches one and a half hundred years.

Initially, only a small area near the palace was cleared, and everywhere around there remained a continuous spruce forest. There was also a ditch with clean, very cold water flowing through it, and huge burbots were found in it. They called it “monk’s”: supposedly in the grotto from which it flowed, there stood the figure of a monk. Expansion of the park began in the mid-19th century. Then they began to drain the surrounding swamps, uproot old trees, and in their place plant new young oaks, maples, lindens and birches. They paved roads and cut clearings for walking and riding in carriages.

In 1783, an English garden was laid out near the palace. On the northern facade of the palace there was a Big (or Babolovsky) pond, formed by the Kuzminka River after the construction of a dam on it; to the south of the palace there was a Mirror (or Silver) pond. The palace experienced a rebirth after reconstruction carried out by V.P. Stasov in 1824-1825.

Catherine's grandson Alexander1 loved this place, and allegedly had intimate dates here. Alexander remodeled the palace and ordered a giant granite bathtub instead of white marble. The compositional center of the palace was the oval hall, the size of which the architect significantly increased in order to accommodate a new bathtub.

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 unnecessary (120 tons). The work took 10 years and was completed on time with the highest quality. The result is a polished granite bathtub: height 196 cm, depth 152 cm, diameter 533 cm, weight 48 tons. Data on a displacement of 8 thousand buckets, according to calculated data - 12 tons of water.

Architect Stasov wrote: “On the occasion of the highest order to make a stone dome, instead of the proposed wooden ceiling over the oval hall, being built around the granite bath placed at the Babolovsky pavilion, it became necessary:

1. Thicken the foundations and walls in proportion to the burden and expansion of such a dome and for this purpose.

2. Break down the remaining part of the former hall and some part of the adjacent walls of the pavilion with their foundations..."

This object, popularly called the Tsar Bath, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records, but is still not recognized as a museum exhibit. The authorities treat this unique object, carved out of granite, like garbage...

Initially, the block of red granite interspersed with green labradorite, from which they were going to cut out the bathtub, 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 technology is capable of lifting this load.

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 cool off in cool water. Since august persons, especially ladies, were not supposed to be naked in public, they could do their refreshment in this pool. Why is the pool not made of polypropylene? - Yes, because there were no other materials other than granite then. Why wasn't the water heated? - Well, 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, due to the death of the Customer (Alexander1), the heirs abandoned the construction of the pool, deciding to display the bathtub as an object of stone-cutting art.
The second version is “Masonic”. Its supporters consider the Babolovsky palace with the bowl as the future main Masonic temple. At the same time, “experts” see numerous Masonic signs in the decorations of the palace. This version does not fit well with the fact that in 1822 Alexander1 issued the highest rescript “On the destruction of Masonic lodges and all secret societies.” It’s hard to believe that Alexander1, when destroying the lodges, left one for himself.

There is a third version, humorous and 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-distance space communications...”

- a country of paradoxes! Only we have the Tsar Bell, which never rang, and the Tsar Cannon, which, according to legend, fired only once in history. However, both the bell and the cannon are in the Kremlin, and the people of Russia are terribly proud of them. While another royal artifact, the Tsar Bath, completely undeservedly vegetates in oblivion - in the dilapidated Babolovsky Palace on the outskirts of Tsarskoye Selo...

FOR INTIME MEETINGS

Numerous visitors to Tsarskoye Selo do not spoil Babolovsky Park with attention: it is neglected to such an extent that it rather resembles a forest. But here it is always quiet and calm. And if you walk along the main alley, you will come to a pond formed in the place where the Kuzminka River is blocked by a dam bridge.

On the other side, red brick ruins are all that remains of the Babolovsky Palace. To be fair, it should be said that crowds of people never walked around him. Firstly, it is not customary to loiter around the royal residence. Secondly, this palace was originally built for intimate meetings of monarchs, quiet rest after a hunt, and not for a ball or other noisy court entertainment. By and large, it can be called a palace with a huge stretch: it has only 10 rooms, and three of them are reserved for “bath” premises. An interesting detail: from each room of the palace you can freely exit into the park. Why did you need to do this? big question. Maybe representatives of the royal family practiced blind dates? And the extra door is additional opportunity for a "retreat"?

The first wooden palace appeared on this site in 1782. And it was presented by Catherine II to her favorite Grigory Potemkin. Wooden structure- modest, but tasteful - cost the treasury 3,984 rubles, but it was possible to live in it only in the summer. Therefore, in 1785, a stone building in the Gothic style was built in its place according to Neelov’s design. This palace already cost 15,000 rubles - fabulous money at that time. But it was an original building - with a turret that housed a marble-lined bathtub for bathing... Alas, this highlight was not enough for the empress to fall in love with the Babolovsky Palace. It was empty almost all the time, and therefore fell into disrepair...

NEED A BIGGER BATH!

The beloved grandson of Catherine II, Alexander I, breathed new life into it. He decided to rebuild the Babolovsky Palace for himself. And he started by ordering a new bathtub - “bigger.” When the architect V.P. Stasov, who was entrusted with the reconstruction project, found out what a “bigger bath” was in the mind of Alexander I, he realized: in order to implement the emperor’s idea, the palace would simply have to be dismantled!

Can you imagine starting your home by installing the plumbing? No? This is because you are not an emperor. But Alexander I had no doubts. This is how a unique palace with a hipped tower erected around a granite bath appeared in Babolovsky Park.

The bath itself was ordered from the then popular stonemason Samson Sukhanov and his team. The work took 8 long years - from 1811 to 1818. It did not stop even during the War of 1812. Sukhanov estimated the cost of manufacturing the granite bowl at 16,000 rubles!

A 160-ton dark pink granite block was found on one of the Finnish islands. It is not known for certain where the bathtub was hewn out of it - directly in the quarry or near the installation site. But the result was a bowl that has no equal in the world.

Its weight is 48 tons, diameter is 5.33 meters, depth is 1.52 meters, height is 1.96 meters. It included up to 800 buckets of water. The work done by the stonemasons can be called truly hellish. Just to give the granite block a cup-shaped shape, it was necessary to make tens of billions of blows with a mallet on a scarpel (this is a tool, a steel rod expanded at one end in the form of a sharpened blade).

You need to hit the same number of times so that the outer contours become perfectly rounded. At that time there were no carbide stone-cutting tools. The simple steel tools that the craftsmen used had to be sharpened after every 3-4 hits on granite. It’s simply amazing how, under such conditions, they managed to create a bowl of an ideal geometric shape!

It is unknown how such a huge thing was delivered to Babolovo. After all, neither cranes nor other technical devices didn't exist then...

THE MIRACLE OF SCULPTION

The result exceeded all expectations: when the emperor saw the bath, he was delighted. His mood was shared by everyone who saw this miracle. And “Domestic Notes” reported to the general public: “Finally, this summer Sukhanov finished the wonderful, only bath for the Babolovskaya bathhouse... 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 since nothing so huge of granite has been known since the time of the Egyptians. Foreigners did not want to believe that Sukhanov was able to produce this miracle of sculpture or sculpting art...”

A cast-iron staircase with railings, equipped with viewing platforms, led to the bathtub-pool. In short, we did everything to royal family it was convenient to swim. Which is exactly what she did. She didn't care how the bath filled with water.

But contemporaries are racking their brains over this question: it is unlikely that this giant was filled by hand every time. Surviving descriptions claim that the water came from a sluice near the bridge. But no one knows how this happened in practice. How they drained the water is also a mystery. After all, there is no hole for this in the bottom of the bath. But it is physically impossible to tilt it.

PILOTS SCHOOL

After the 1917 revolution, the palace did not become a museum. A pilot school was located here. This decided the fate of the unique structure. During the Great Patriotic War The palace was actively bombed, and it quickly turned into ruins. But a miracle! The bath itself was not damaged. By the way, 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 to Germany: they did not have any suitable equipment or vehicles.

Today, the remains of the building with the Tsar Bath inside are surrounded by a fence and are awaiting the start of restoration, which has not begun. It's a pity! A unique stone structure could attract many tourists and people interested in history. After all, unlike other Tsar objects in Russia, the miracle bath was actively used for its intended purpose!

Considering the uniqueness of the stone bath, modern specialists working in the field of granite processing, of course, became interested in the process of its creation. No formal studies have been conducted. However, on the Internet you can find a lot of evidence from experts who unanimously say: it is technically impossible to carve such a stone bathtub by hand! And polish it even more so! Such precision and smoothness can only be achieved using machine processing.

Some especially zealous researchers compared the Tsar Bath with a sarcophagus in the Cheops pyramid, the manufacturing technology of which is also unknown.

Finally, wide use received a version that the giant bath is a legacy of past civilizations of the Earth and found it in the swamps near Tsarskoe Selo.

However, this version is easily refuted by financial documents confirming that a lot of money was allocated to create the amazing bowl.

Updated article with brief description possible technologies for manufacturing the Tsar Bath in Babolovo.
There are probably only a few who do not know about the existence near St. Petersburg of a masterpiece of stone craftsmanship from the past - the Tsar of the Bath. It is also called the “Babolovskaya Bowl”. The huge size of the bathtub is amazing, but there is no explanation as to how it was made. Especially against the background complete absence drawings, process descriptions and drawings.

In Tsarskoe Selo, on the outskirts of Babolovsky Park, there are the ruins of the Babolovsky Palace. Inside the octagonal tower, you will see a giant granite bowl, a colossal monolithic pool of red granite, about two meters high and more than 5 meters in diameter.

The current state of the palace. Although, they wrote to me in the comments that restoration has been going on for three years. Apparently they haven't finished yet, because... No one is posting new photos.

This is how he was originally

There is a stone miracle installed inside. The bath was made by Samson Ksenofontovich Sukhanov.

Official information about bathtub making is as follows:
in 1818, a granite block weighing more than 160 tons was delivered to Babolovo from one of the Finnish islands. (I still don’t understand how it was delivered deep into the continent - 27 miles over rough terrain?). The craftsmen had to cut off everything unnecessary (120 tons). The work took 10 years and was completed on time with the highest quality. The result is a polished granite bathtub: height 196 cm, depth 152 cm, diameter 533 cm, weight 48 tons. Data on a displacement of 8 thousand buckets. The thickness of the bowl walls is minimal - 45 cm.

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, slopes, and observation platforms were made on brackets. The work ended in 1829, 4 years after the death of the customer, Alexander I.

Many are puzzled by the fact that there is no drain hole in the Bathtub, and there are also no technical capabilities for supplying and heating water. But that's not true. The photo will be below.

A short video with information about the Tsar Bath:

Bathtub size compared to person's height

Perhaps the bath was not finished, i.e. the surface was left without polishing

Throughout the entire time, from the moment I learned about the existence of such a product, I have been haunted by the question: why don’t our ministries reconstruct the building, why don’t they make an interesting place for tourists. After all, this is in any case an achievement of our past masters. It needs to be preserved and the information disseminated. Or are they afraid that people will start asking uncomfortable questions? Which? For example, about manufacturing technology. It’s unlikely that there are stone-cutting factories in our time that could take on such work...

Let's move on to the manufacturing technologies of this bath. Let's start with the latest and most controversial version:

1. Die casting.
To immediately understand this version, look at the process of making concrete flowerpots somewhere in Southeast Asia:

Here's another similar example:

Thank you peshkints for the version expressed

There is a hole from the pipe in the center of the flowerpot. It is poured and smoothed over with concrete before it sets. It turns out that there is a hole in the center of the Tsar Bath. And it is not classified as a drain, because... diameter is too small. But the hole from a pipe when stamping using this technology is quite good. I just don’t understand why the craftsmen didn’t cover it up?

Hole in the Tsar Bath

Many readers will say that the video shows concrete. And the Tsar Bath is granite. There are many facts that artificial granite could be created from mixtures. I showed examples in my articles.
Here is one recipe for simulating granite composition:

Imitation granite
Mix clean fine sand, pyrite or some other mass containing flint with freshly burnt and crushed lime in the following proportion: 10 sand or pyrite and 1 lime. Lime, quenched by the moisture of the sand, eats away the flint and forms a thin layer around each flint grain. Once cooled, the mixture is softened with water. Then take 10 crushed granite and 1 lime and mix it into place. Both mixtures are placed in a metal mold so that the mixture of sand and lime forms the very middle of the object, and the mixture of granite and lime forms the outer shell from 6 to 12 mm (depending on the thickness of the object being prepared). Finally, the mass is pressed and hardened by drying it in air. The coloring agent is iron ore and iron oxide, which are mixed hot with granite granite.
If they want to give special hardness to objects formed from the above composition, then they are placed in potassium silicate for an hour and subjected to heat at 150°C.
Information from the book “The Handicraftsman's Handbook”, 1931.

Tell me, who tested this recipe? There is no such information. What if the recipe works? What if one of many? So, I would not exclude the possibility of making the Tsar Bath and similar granite products from compositions very similar to or replicating natural granite. In addition, I believe that natural granite is not an igneous rock, but a mineral rock, petrified or crystallized mud masses emerging from the depths.

2. Manufacturing from granite block

I provided brief official information about this above. It turns out that there are references to the manufacture of similar products in the 19-20 centuries:

Lustgarten granite bowl

70 tons, made in 1826-1827. The initial processing of the profile of the bowl, made from a 225-ton granite plate, was carried out directly in the quarry by 20 stonemasons, after which the bowl was moved using rollers to the port, onto a barge.

Granite bowl in a grinding workshop. Figure 1831. The equipment is very similar to the patterns from stamping flowerpots in the video above.

Previously she stood like this

Drawing of the installation process.

Another similar product:

In 1910, a fountain bowl was made from a 65-ton granite block for Union Station Plaza in Washington. Processing was carried out manually according to templates, using 4 and 6 blade hammers. When polishing it was first used Rotary table. Polishing was carried out using iron irons, felt discs and polishing pastes.

I couldn't find any information on it.

Apparently, either the craftsmen still knew how to make such masterpieces from multi-ton granite blocks. Moreover, they knew how to deliver these blocks to the place of manufacture and knew how to install them.
Or they want to pass off the technology of sculpting from artificial granite to us as the skill of processing this hard rock.
What do you think?

A duplicate of the article can be viewed at Yandex.Zen . There are comments here too.
***

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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 cared about making something like this. And why this product is not widely advertised as a technological achievement (and not bast shoes) of our ancestors is not clear to me. The size of the product is so huge that one can hardly believe it (as well as the Alexandria Column, St. Isaac's Cathedral, granite forts in St. Petersburg). And it is quite possible that this is a legacy from the more ancient, antediluvian inhabitants of this region. But at the beginning I propose the official version of the appearance of this miracle:

Original taken from a_lirika in Tsar Bath in Babolovo

In Tsarskoe Selo, on the outskirts of Babolovsky Park, there are the ruins of the Babolovsky Palace. If you look through the wall gap inside the octagonal tower, you 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 Babolovsky Palace was built in the era of Catherine the Second (1785) as a one-story dacha-bath for summer holiday. The red brick building was made in the then fashionable Gothic style and harmoniously fits into the park landscape.

Catherine's grandson Alexander1 loved this place, and allegedly had intimate dates here. Alexander remodeled the palace and ordered, instead of a white marble one, a giant granite bathtub, which was contracted to be made by the famous St. Petersburg master stonecutter Samson Sukhanov.

Samson Ksenofontovich Sukhanov was born in 1868 into the family of a shepherd in the village of Zavotezhitsy, Vologda province. In his youth he worked as a farm laborer, barge hauler, shoemaker, and hunter; was wounded by a polar bear when he felled him with a spear. But Samson’s passion since childhood was drawing and making toys from clay.

In the summer of 1797, Samson came from Arkhangelsk to St. Petersburg with a fish train. He was contracted to work as a stonemason on the construction of the Mikhailovsky Castle, where he proved himself to be the most in the best possible way. Upon completion of the construction of the Mikhailovsky Castle, he organized his own artel. By that time, Samson had learned to read and write, was able to carry out calculations and read architectural drawings. The architect of the Kazan Cathedral, A. N. Voronikhin, entrusted the artel of S. Sukhanov with the construction of the external colonnade, and then the internal columns of the temple. For this work, Samson was awarded a gold medal. Then came orders for Rostral columns, sculptural groups of the Admiralty, the Mining Institute, embankments... The work was naturally done by hand, only a stone hammer and chisel, and of course “by eye,” albeit with amazing accuracy.

It is not surprising that the court engineer Betancourt turned to the famous stonemason team, and Sukhanov entered into an agreement in 1818 to make a bathtub, asking 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. (I still don’t understand how it was delivered deep into the continent - 27 miles over rough terrain?). The craftsmen had to cut off everything unnecessary (120 tons). The work took 10 years and was completed on time with the highest quality. The result is a polished granite bathtub: height 196 cm, depth 152 cm, diameter 533 cm, weight 48 tons. Data on a displacement of 8 thousand buckets, according to calculated data - 12 tons of water.

The work ended in 1829, and 4 years earlier the Customer (Alexander1) died and took with him to the grave the secret of the purpose of this unusual structure. How did the Customer want to use it?

Contemporaries are puzzled by the fact that there is no drain hole in the Bathtub, and there are also no technical capabilities for supplying and heating water.

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 cool off in cool water. Since august persons, especially ladies, were not supposed to be naked in public, they could do their refreshment in this pool. Why is the pool not made of polypropylene? - Yes, because there were no other materials other than granite then. Why wasn't the water heated? - Well, because this pool was planned to be used only in the summer and only for cooling. This version is supported by the water supply reconstruction plan.

There really is no drain hole in the bathroom. But under the foundation of the bath there is a collector for receiving water, and the bottom of the bowl is located 1.5 meters above the surface near the underlying pond. Most likely, after the completion of the main work, due to the death of the Customer (Alexander1), the heirs abandoned the construction of the pool, deciding to display the bathtub as an object of stone-cutting art. Thus, like the “Tsar Cannon” and the “Tsar Bell,” the “Tsar Bath” was never used for its intended purpose.

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-distance space communications..”

The twentieth century did not spare Babolovsky Park and the palace. First they stopped caring for the park, then they sawed down hundred-year-old trees for household needs, then the war came and destroyed the palace. But the bowl has survived to this day intact and intact! The Germans were unable to take it out because in this part of Europe they did not have the technical capabilities to lift and transport a 50-ton giant.