NORTH CAPE, NORWAY. A promontory, situated on the north extremity of the Island of Mageroe, which is divided by a narrow channel from the mainland of Norway. It is celebrated, not only for the sombre grandeur of its scenery, but as the northernmost point of Europe. It consists of a precipitous slate rock, fissured with many clefts, which rise to a height of some twelve hundred feet above the sea.
KREMLIN AND GREAT BELL, MOSCOW, RUSSIA. The Kremlin is the name given to an inner enclosure or citadel in Moscow crowded with palaces, churches and towers, surrounded by a wall sixty feet in height and two miles in circuit. The Tartar style of architecture, with gilded domes and cupolas, forms the predominant feature. The palace of the Kremlin is the residence of the czars. It suffered much damage in the conflagration of 1812, which drove Napoleon out of the city, and was rebuilt in the reign of Nicholas I in 1838–49. In its restored shape it is rather a mass of buildings, old and new, than a single, harmonious structure. But it is full of historical and immediate interest. The tower of Ivan the Great, whose five stories rise to a height of three hundred and twenty-five feet, is close to the palace. At its foot lies the Great Bell, the largest in the world—cast in 1730. It was broken a few years afterwards by the burning of the wooden tower in which it was suspended. Its height is twenty-six feet four inches, its circumference sixty-seven feet eleven inches.
CHURCH OF ST. BASIL, MOSCOW, RUSSIA. This remarkable edifice, standing on the site of an ancient church and cemetery where St. Basil was buried, was built in 1554 by Ivan IV. He is said to have been so much delighted with it that he put out the eyes of its Italian architect, so that it might never be surpassed. It is a bewildering medley of great and little domes and towers, not only of different shapes and sizes, but gilded and painted in all possible varieties of color. There is no main chapel or church, but each dome surmounts its own chapel, dedicated to some particular saint, and services are carried on in each without disturbing the worshipers in any other. Bayard Taylor appropriately styles this church the “apotheosis of chimneys,” and describes it as the product of some architectural kaleidoscope, in which the most incongruous things assume a certain order and system. Relics of St. Basil and of St. John the Idiot are shown to visitors.
ROYAL MUSEUM, BERLIN, PRUSSIA. Architecturally, this is the finest building in Berlin. It is an admirable specimen of the Greek style, with its Ionic portico of eighteen columns and its broad flight of steps leading up to the entrance. The central part of the structure, rising above the rest of the building and corresponding with the rotunda in the interior, is adorned at the corners with four colossal groups in bronze. Two other bronze groups are on the steps. This building is usually known as the Old Museum to distinguish it from its annex, the New Museum, by which it is connected with a short passage, crossing the street at the back. The two buildings contain a magnificent collection of antiquities and of ancient and modern sculptures, paintings, etc.
BRANDENBURG GATE, BERLIN, PRUSSIA. This gate, at the west end of the famous Unter der Linden, the principal street in Berlin, forms the entrance to the city from the Thier-garten. Next to the Arc de l’Etoile in Paris, this is the most magnificent triumphal arch in the world. It even eclipses the ancient monuments of this kind in Rome. Yet it is not entirely original. It was erected in 1789–93 by C. G. Langhans in imitation, or rather as a glorification, of the model presented by the Propylacum at Athens. The height is eighty-five feet, the width two hundred and five. There are five passages (that in the centre reserved for royal carriages), separated by massive Doric columns. The material is sandstone. A notable feature is the triumphal car on the summit, the Quadriga of Victoria, done in copper. Napoleon carried this to Paris in 1807, but it was recovered in 1814. Adjoining the gate on the side next the town are two wings resembling Grecian temples, of which that on the right or north side contains a telegraph office and a pneumatic post-office, while that on the left is the guard-house.
