Imperial Splendour

Library Journal

This volume is exactly what it purports to be--a picture book, enhanced by numerous gatefolds that offer, inter alia, wide-angled views of the ancient kremlins with their churches and monasteries laid out along the placid rivers of Russia. One dramatic photograph after another highlights the characteristic golden onion domes of cathedrals glistening against a brooding sky. Also featured are the magnificent palaces with their parks and landscaped gardens built by various monarchs around Moscow and St. Petersburg, many of which have been restored since World War II. Galitzine, a historian and descendant of Catherine the Great, leads this tour of the ancient cities of Novgorod, Pskov, and the Golden Ring, an historic region to the northeast of Moscow. A brief but informative text introduces each region. Recommended for most collections as a distinctive overview of the subject.-- Edward B. Cone, New York