Underground construction discovered by local resident in eastern Moldova

Chisinau, 21 February /MOLDPRES/ - A tunnel with more niches in walls has been recently discovered by a local resident in the Grigoriopol town, left bank of Dniester, according to electronic sources.  

Ethnographer Natalia Berzan, who is member of the geographers’ society from the Transnistrian region, said that such underground constructions had been found earlier in this settlement; yet, so far, it has been still unclear when, how and why they were digged. “Specific research has not been organized and elderly local residents know nothing about the origin of the tunnels, although they suppose that they appeared much before the foundation of the Grigoriopol town,” Berzan said.   

The ethnographer has been busy with the subject of underground channels from this settlement for a long time. She managed to accumulate more information about the constructions and even to get into some of them. “No humidity is felt in these channels and the temperature reaches 15 Celsius degrees. Judging by all signs, there is microclimate here and some details show that the underground constructions are endowed with ventilation channels,” Natalia Berzan said, quoted by www.novostipmr.md.   

For their part, other researchers from the left bank of Dniester said that Grigoriopol was not the only settlement where underground constructions had been found. Similar architectonic phenomena were discovered also in Bender, Dubasari, Rascov and Tiraspol.

„There are more underground networks of this kind in the region, which are of great interest for specialists. They were built according to the same architectonic principle, they are endowed with communications and are well-preserved,” the director of the historical and geographic society from the Transnistrian region, Aleksandr Gornostali, said.  

According to Gornostali, a competent research campaign is needed, with the involvement of more specialists of various specialties, first of all archaeologists and architects, who following investigations, are to clear up more things in terms of history and purpose of the underground constructions from the left bank of Dniester.   

Grigoriopol is a town placed on the left bank of Dniester, at a distance of 53 km far from Chisinau. The settlement is situated at the confluence of the Dniester and Ciorna rivers. The latter river is also known as Comor, which is also the old name of the town. The first documentary attestation of the settlement dates back in 1792.