Product Description

Millions of people annually visit the great country palaces built by the tsars in a circle round St. Petersburg. Created by artists from all over Europe, with untold serf labour at their disposal, the palaces were intended to impress and they do. Today, in the corner of most rooms, a single black and white photograph shows the same room in 1944, amid the smouldering wreckage found by Russian soldiers returning after the three-year siege of Leningrad. Forced to abandon the palaces, the Nazis vented their anger on the treasures they occupied. The story behind these photographs is in many ways more impressive even than the rooms themselves. It is the story of a relatively small band of talented Russians who were determined not to allow their country's heritage to be swept away by all the horrors of the twentieth century. The palaces today are truly the work of Russians but restorers have to be self-effacing. There have been books about what they did but not about them. In "Saving The Tsars' Palaces", Christopher Morgan and Irina Orlova vividly recount the remarkable story of those who battled to save the palaces, not just during and after the war, but during the Revolution and the harsh times that followed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #202249 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 196 pages

Customer Reviews

The Best....
A SUPERB book - I visited all its Palaces in St Petersburg and surrounds in September last.
The Russians have done a simply wonderful restoration job on all these Palaces the wretched Germans blew up - though I am still at a loss to know WHY the Russian authorities did restore them so, considering they had murdered as many Romanovs etc as they could in 1917/18 !!
So does anyone know WHY did they spend billions of roubles in their extremely accurate restoration - when the people were as poor as church mice, as the saying goes ????
The ordinary people are STILL poor - yet the authorities still continue to restore.....all that gold leaf is a sight to behold !!
The book is a real 'story' - describing how the 'guardians' of various museums went to look at the Palaces as soon as they could as the Germans retreated - and the way their hearts sank as the Palaces, with their roofs blown off and blackened walls from fire, came into view....
and it has been their life's work to restore them.
A simply wonderful job - wonderful for the Russian people to see, and wonderful for tourists as I was for a whole month - but being steeped for 40 years in the history of the Romanovs, and the history of Russia, I did hardly any organised tours which are horrendously short - 2 hours at wonderful Gatchina ? Pavlovsk ? The Peterhof? Tsarskoe Selo ? - doing only the huge Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe, and not the Alexander Palace where Nicky and Alix and the children lived, and Alexander and Dagmar before them ????? There were only THREE people in the Alexander Palace !!! The Catherine Palace and Amber Room were jam packed with people queueing to get in !
I went to them all on my own with an excellent guide book - I had a car to take me to these Palaces, and 7 HOURS later pick me up to take me back to St. Petersberg again, after 'living' those times of pre 1914.
And this book tells the whole wonderful story.
I highly recommend it.

Saving the Tsars' Palaces
I found this book to be excellent in giving an account of the fate of the royal palaces after the revolution and during world war II. However I would have liked a lot more before and after photographs to illustrate the massive scale of the restorations.

A long overdue book on Russia's gifted craftsmen
Although considered to be some of the finest palaces in the world, the lavish edifices are a testimony to the excesses of the Russian Royal house that was the envy of Europe in the 19th century. However, in the aftermath of the Revolution, they became Palaces of the people and most Russians take pride in the excellent restoration work. The communist government was also aware of the importance of the buildings in attracting foreign tourists and their much needed dollars to Russia. Although restoration is still ongoing, the amounts spent are far outweighed by the tourist revenue generated. One should also bear in mind that Russia is now generating huge revenues from her gas and oil reserves....so while many Russians are still poor...their government can no longer be seen as such.