The Winter Palace: A masterpiece by Italian and French architects on Neva continue… May 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Bank Note, Beach Resorts, Credit Card, Flight Schedule, Library, Memorial, Moscow, Museum, Paris, Travel Clinic, Travellers Cheque , 3commentsWith Catherine the Great in power we find a new style creeping into the character of the buildings, classical tendencies from the West replacing Elisabeth’s Russian rococo style, the Palladian influence reaching as far as St Petersburg. The town gradually became, particularly in the reign of Alexander I, an ‘ Empire’ town; its classicist features were introduced first by Quarenghi and later maintained by Rossi. Rinaldi, the Italian architect, and the French Vallin de la Mothe, both employed by Catherine the Great, brought the Louis XVI style to St Petersburg, but on an overwhelming scale, inspired and required by the gigantic dimensions of the Neva. (more…)
The Winter Palace: A masterpiece by Italian and French architects on Neva May 4, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Beach Resorts, Credit Card, Finland, Health Insurance, Library, Memorial, Moscow, Museum, Russia, Travellers Cheque , 3commentsIt is impossible to talk of the Winter Palace without first conjuring up a picture of the city of St Petersburg, now Leningrad, and of the Neva River. I know of nothing in the world more beautiful than that great expanse of limpid and tremulous water, purified by the filter of the Ladoga Lake, and constantly agitated by tiny iridescent waves, that flow impetuously between the double dam of its magnificent embankments built in the rose granite of Finland. And the powerful stream that moves between the golden needle of the Petropavlovsk Fortress and the long facade of the Winter Palace is but a very small part indeed of the great river. (more…)
Corfu: The place erected in honour of St Michael and St George continue… April 21, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Beach Resorts, Credit Card, Greece, Hotels, Lodges, Memorial , add a commentIt comes therefore as a surprise to learn that the architect was a British soldier. Colonel (afterwards General Sir George) Whitmore was an officer in the Royal Engineers, attached to the Corfu garrison for the purpose. In his unpublished memoirs, recently unearthed by Mr Stelio Hourmouzios, Whitmore described the difficulties by which he was beset. It was only after his design had been approved that he was told that the legislative chamber was to be housed under the same roof; and the parsimony which hampered his first designs was gradually relaxed as the work progressed (a strange experience for an architect) and he was obliged to spend on the embellishment of the interior what he would have gladly earmarked at an earlier stage on the design as a whole. (more…)
Egypt Temple of Karnak April 17, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cairo, Credit Card, Egypt , 5commentsIn fact, Karnak is not a temple; it is a complex of temples. Today’s visitor arrives there easily from Luxor, only a couple of miles away. We have already referred to Luxor as the modern town that grew up where Thebes was; in reality the true ancient center, the heart of the New Kingdom’s political and religious life, must have been Karnak. The first impression one has when crossing the threshold of the first pylon (there are many pylons at Karnak), and finding himself amid the ruins of what was the greatest ancient Egyptian sanctuary, is that he will not be able to make any sense out of it. Even the Giza pyramids, although mysterious looking, have an internal logic; they are closed up in themselves and one intuitively experiences them, even when we don’t understand them. Karnak does not offer this possibility. Walking along the courtyards, rooms, columns, obelisks, statues, and miles of hieroglyphic inscriptions, the visitor soon loses any capacity to link one element or monument with another. Therefore one must return to Karnak again and again. Even then, as we have warned, he must avoid searching among the monuments with aesthetic or rational criteria — in short, modern, Western standards. And we have also said that the true temple of Amon was always the sanctuary that formed the central nucleus. All the various additions made over the course of centuries have their own value per se; they are separate nuclei whose presence is independently justified by ceremonial needs, by new ideological lines, or by new links between the various divinities. (more…)
