Customer Reviews

The Golden Ring: Cities of Old Russia

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"The nine medieval cities featured in this ... volume are the oldest and most lavishly endowed with architectural monuments in all of Russia." The featured nine are Novgorod, Pskov, Vladimir, Suzdal, Zagorsk, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Rostov-the-Great, Yaroslavl, and Kostroma. The "Golden Ring" is the term used to refer to a subset of these, grouped to the north and east of Moscow; Novgorod and Pskov are away off to the west, nearer the Baltic. For each city there are on average 4-5 pages of text and 10-15 photos, many of them full-page.

Alexei Komech is an architectural historian and editor. His text is interesting, informative, and in no way over-technical.

Vadim Gippenreiter's excellent photos were taken with attention not only to composition and architectural detail, but to nuances of weather, season, time of day and special lighting conditions. There are scenes with snow and others with summer wildflowers; Vladimir's Cathedral of the Dormition rising out of mist, Rostov's Holy Savior-Yakovlevsky Monastery in a golden sunset from across Lake Nero, and the Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery in Zagorsk, essentially a massive fortress enclosing a wonderland of domed and spired churches.

One relatively minor (to me) criticism or complaint: although the title says "cities" and Komech's introduction gives a brief overview of the history of the cities as a whole, the sections on each individual location, both text and photos, focus almost exclusively on churches and monasteries. It's all interesting and the photos are gorgeous, but -- aren't there any other kinds of buildings or features of historical significance in these nine places?

OLD RUSSIAN CITIES, by the same authors, is this same book. It's the U.K. edition; different title, cover photo, and publisher, but identical contents.