National Geographic: Treasures from the Past Page #4

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And some customers express concern

that they're not going to live long

enough to see the finished product.

I think in most cases they are being

a little facetious,

but I can appreciate that when you

look at a long-term project

in your later years,

it could be a concern.

Restored for the pleasure of those

very few who can afford it,

the Duesenberg lives on

in Auburn, Indiana.

But in a city for away,

heroic endeavors are recovering

the treasures of a nation

for all the world to see.

Through the heart of Leningrad

flows the Neva River.

Along these banks nearly

three centuries ago,

one man created a great city

St. Petersburg

which became the capital of imperial Russia.

Today, Peter the Great still

looks out over his city.

With watchful eye he gazes

on wondrous visions...

...grand and exuberant visions

of a tsar

who like his country, was strong and proud

...fairy-tale places sprung up

as if by magic...

...country playgrounds for the

imperial court of Peter

and his successors...

...designed by the great

architects of Europe,

created from exquisite materials

by a multitude of craftsmen

summoned from afar.

On long winter nights,

these rooms were made brilliant

by candlelight reflected a

thousand fold in crystal mirrors.

Light danced on paintings overhead

and set the walls ablaze with color.

Light burned in gilded faces,

as costumed nobility

danced into the night.

They waltzed on parquet floors of

wood from the forests

of Europe and Asia, designed

in astonishing patterns.

Surrounded by their treasures,

the stars and their court waltzed

on into the 20th century.

The dance ended with the

Russian Revolution in 1917,

but the palaces lived on as museums.

Then distant rumblings in Europe

suddenly exploded on their doorstep.

In 1941 Nazi forces

surrounded Leningrad.

Hitler planned to level the city,

but the Soviet Army would not yield.

During the siege, the Nazis occupied

four palaces on the city outskirts.

After 900 days they withdrew,

burning the palaces as they left.

When the fires died,

a nation's treasures lay in ruin.

At the Catherine Palace,

chimneys protruded from a roofless skeleton.

Statues-victims of bombshells

and gunfire.

Stillness filled the Great Hall.

Parquet floors lay charred

under a blanket of winter snow.

A soldier in the Soviet Army,

Alexander Kedrinsky

remembers the siege.

After the Nazi retreat,

he entered the Catherine Palace.

On this spot in the Great Hall,

he looked up through broken rafters

at the winter sky.

Inside the palace, the interiors

that were not burned were looted.

Pictures had been viciously

slashed out of their frames;

only the outer edges remained.

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