connected with the Winter Palace, is one of most famous in Europe and contains one thousand seven hundred paintings of all schools, among them being some by Murillo, Velasquez, Rubens, Van Dyke, Rembrandt, and Ruysdael.
Moscow (mŏs’kō), the ancient capital of the Russian Empire, is one of the most magnificent and interesting cities of the world. The city is gathered in a semi-circle around the citadel, or Kremlin, which stands immediately upon the river bank. The streets are exceedingly irregular, though generally presenting the appearance of broad, well-paved avenues of a modern European city. The innumerable white, semi-oriental structures which greet the vision from every commanding point, with their unnumbered domes, spires, belfries, towers, and minarets, give to the city a magnificence of beauty scarcely to [545] be found elsewhere in the great cities of Europe.
The Kremlin.—The historic, as well as the most interesting part of the city, is within the walls of the Kremlin. It is associated with much that is held in deepest reverence by Russians—here the imperial power receives religious consecration, and the great bell of Ivan Veliky proclaims the new monarch. The Kremlin is an assemblage of many buildings, covering quite a section of the city—churches, palaces, arsenals, barracks, monuments—enclosed within a brick wall about a mile and a half in circuit. Upon the wall, which is sixty feet high, are twenty-one towers. The principal gate, the Gate of the Saviour, is on the east side. Over the passage of the gate is the venerated “Saviour” brought from Smolensk in 1685, and it is the custom for the passer-by to uncover his head.
The Tower of Ivan Veliky, or John the Great, built in 1600, and three hundred and twenty feet high, contains thirty-four bells, the largest of which weighs sixty-four tons. When all these bells are rung together at Easter the effect is wonderful. At the foot of this tower is the vast Tsar Kolokol, or Monarch of Bells. It once hung in a tower (burned in 1737), weighs four hundred and forty-four thousand pounds, and is twenty feet high and sixty feet round. The value of the metal in the bell is nearly two million dollars.
Outside the Kremlin is the Chinese town, so-called, founded by Helena. Here are the Romanoff Palace, the Iberian Gate and Chapel, the University, the great Riding School, the Theaters, and the largest Bazaar in Russia, except that of Nijni-Novgorod.
The Church of the Saviour, is conspicuous near the river, a quarter mile southwest of the Kremlin. This beautiful church, by the architect Thon, was erected 1837-1883, at a cost of more than eight million dollars. It has five cupolas, the principal being about one hundred feet in diameter; many figures in relief of patriarchs and saints upon the facade. The interior is elaborately decorated with marble and gilding; upon the walls are tablets relating to military events, admirable paintings and sculpture.
The Cathedral of St. Basil, erected 1554-1557, is a remarkable edifice, consisting of eleven chapels with as many cupolas, all different, but wonderfully proportioned.
Vladivostok (vlä-dē-vōs-tok´), capital (since 1903) of the vice-royalty of Eastern Asia, Siberia, is situated on the east shore of Amur Gulf. It has one of the finest harbors in the world, is a naval station, has an arsenal, and is a terminus of the Siberian railroad. It escaped attack during the Russo-Japanese war, but suffered from naval mutiny and unrest in the Russian disturbances of 1905-1906. Its climate is severe—the average annual temperature being only forty degrees Fahrenheit.
HISTORY OF RUSSIA
The races who peopled Russia were vaguely known to the ancients as Scythians, and their country as Sarmatia. It received its name from the Ruotsi or Russ, a tribe of Norse “rovers” or freebooters, who entered the country from the west about the eighth century. The name was later applied to the realm of Moscow, and modified to Russia.