The Kolomenskoye Reserve is associated with many mysterious stories. Today we will talk about the library of Ivan the Terrible, which has been sought for centuries by both professional researchers and enthusiasts. Some of them are convinced that it is located in Kolomenskoye.

The existence of Ivan the Terrible's library has not yet been confirmed, but according to the main historical version, it originally belonged to the Byzantine emperors. After the fall of Byzantium, the library was moved to Rome, and then, as a dowry for Sophia Palaeologus, it arrived in Moscow in 1572. The following year, the library survived a major fire in the Kremlin but remained intact.

The library was treated with great respect. According to legend, Maximus the Greek was involved in translating books into Russian. Over the next hundred years, it significantly increased and eventually passed down to Ivan the Terrible. After his death, the traces of this legendary collection of books disappeared. According to one version, it vanished during the Time of Troubles; according to another, it was hidden by Ivan himself.

For centuries, the search for the legendary Liberium, as Ivan the Terrible's library is also called, has been unsuccessful. Many possible locations for it have been proposed. In the early 1930s, archaeologist Steletsky, having received permission from the authorities, was the first to begin large-scale searches for the library in Kolomenskoye. According to legend, he even found an entrance to a dungeon where an old skeleton lay, but the search was halted due to the dissatisfaction of the residents of the village of Dyakovo, whose cemetery was located above the underground passages. Interestingly, the Church of the Beheading of John the Baptist in Dyakovo was considered one of the possible places where Ivan the Terrible might have hidden the library during his trips from the Kremlin to Kolomenskoye.

We cannot say with certainty how plausible the version of the library's location in the dungeons of Kolomenskoye is, but it is known that such passages do indeed exist and were discovered only 40 years ago.