Case file · Folklore / legend
The search for Ivan the Terrible's library
In 1933–34 the archaeologist Ignatius Stelletsky was allowed to dig beneath the Moscow Kremlin for the legendary lost library of Ivan the Terrible, said to contain Greek and Latin manuscripts from Byzantium; the search was stopped without result.
1933 CE · 55.75, 37.62 · status: disputed
The account
The legend goes back to a 16th-century Livonian chronicle and to a 1724 report by the sexton Konon Osipov of chests seen in a sealed underground room. Stelletsky believed to his death in 1949 that the library existed. Searches and theories continue.
The sceptical view
There is no contemporary evidence that such a library existed in the form described.