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Introduction
Art plays an important role in the life of a man and sometimes it is next to impossible to live without it. It is natural that the first thing that comes to my mind at the mention of the word   ‘art’  is museums.

A museum is a stock of the world’s masterpieces, it is the place, where you can enrich knowledge, you can look at the achievements of mankind, you can satisfy your aesthetic taste. Museums give the possibility to be always in touch with the past and every time discover something new for yourself. Besides, museums play an important role in the life of any nation. A museum is just the right place to find out lots of interesting things about history, traditions and habits of different peoples. One may find in museums papers, photos, books, scripts, works of art, personal things of famous people etc. All this helps us to better understand historical events, scientific discoveries, character and deeds of well-known personalities.

I think museums somehow effect the formation of personality, his outlook. Every educated person is sure to understand the great significance of museums in our life, especially nowadays, when after the humdrum of everyday life you may go to your favourite museum, relax there with your body and soul and acquire inner harmony and balance.

I am a regular museum-goer. In fact I visited no less than 20 museums. Among them: the Louver, the National Gallery, the Shakespeare House in Stratford-on Avon, the Oxford story exhibition, Museum of Reading, Madam Tussaud’s Exhibition ,the Tretyakov Gallery  and others. We can hardly find a town in our country without its «Fine Arts» Museum. I’ve been in Voronezh, Kislovodsk, Essentuky and some other regional museums.

Now I want to write about the Tretyakov Gallery, Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, Buckinngham Palace and Hermitage, about their history and their collections.

The Hermitage




The State Hermitage  in St. Petersburg ranks among the world’s most outstanding art museums. It is the largest museum in Russia: nowadays its vast and varied collections take up four buildings; its rooms if stretched in one line would measure many miles in total length, while they cover an area of 94240 square meters. Over 300 rooms are open to the public and contain a rich selection from the museum’s collections numbering about 2500000 items. The earliest exhibits Date from 500000-300000B.C., the latest are modern works.

The collections possessed by the museum are distributed among its seven departments and form over forty permanent exhibitions. A common feature, characterising these exhibitions is the arrangement of items (all of them originals) according to countries and schools in a strictly chronological order, with a view to illustrating almost every stage of human culture and every great art epoch from the prehistoric times to the 20th century.

Fabulous treasures are gathered in the Museum. It contains a rare collection of specimens of Soythian culture and art; objects of great aesthetic and historical value found in the burial mounds of the Altai; a most complete representation of exhibits characterising Russian culture and art. The Oriental collections of the Museum, ranking among the richest in the world, give an idea of the culture and art of the people of the Near and the Far East; India, China, Byzantium and Iran, are best represented; remarkable materials illustrative of the culture and art of the peoples inhabiting the Caucasus and Central Asia, also from part of the collections of the Department. The Museum numbers among its treasures monuments of ancient Greece and Rome and those from the Greek settlements on the North coast of the Black Sea.

World famous is the collection of West-European paintings, covering a span of about seven hundred years, from the 13th to the 20th century, and comprising works by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, El Greco, Velazquez, Murillo; outstanding paintings by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Rubens; a remarkable group of French eighteenth century  canvases, and Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings. The collection illustrates the art of Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and some other countries. The West European Department of the Museum also includes a fine collection of European sculpture, containing works by Michelangelo, Canova, Falkonet, Houdon, Rodin and many other eminent masters; a marvellous collection of prints and drawings, numbering about 600 000 items; arms and armour; one of the world most outstanding collections of applied art, rich in tapestries, furniture, lace, ivories, porcelain metalwork, bronzes, silver, jewellery and enamels. An important part among the museum possessions is taken by the numismatic collection, which numbers over 1 000 000 items and is regarded as one of the largest in the world. A permanent exhibition of coins, orders and medals is open on the 2nd floor, rooms 398-400. There are auxiliary displays of coins forming part of exhibitions in other departments as well. A temporary exhibition of West-European medals is on view in the Raphael Loggias (1st floor, room 227).

The seven departments of the museum, i.e. the Department of Russian Culture, Primitive culture, Culture and Art of the peoples of the Soviet East, Culture and Art of the Foreign Countries of the East, Culture and Art of the Antique World, West-European Art, Numismatics, together with the Education Department, the Conservation Department and the Library determine the administrative and academic structure of the museum.

Within the past few decades the Hermitage has become one of the country’s most important centres of art study with a research staff of about 200 historians carrying out a vast program of research on art problems, and responsible for the preservation of the museum treasures, their conservation and restoration, and also for the scientific popularisation of art. The results of this varied work are published in the form of books, articles, periodicals, pamphlets, etc.

Since  1949  a post-graduate school has been functioning at the Hermitage, specialists in art working here at their theses.

An important aspect of the Museum’s research activities is the work of the annual archaeological expeditions  organised by the  Museum either independently   or in co-operation with other Soviet scientific institutions. The most notable among them are: the Kazmir-Blur expedition  making excavations of the city of Taishebaini dating from  the 7th century B.C and situated on the Kazmir-Blur hill near Erevan;  the Chersonese  and Nymphaeum  expeditions working  on the sites  of the ancient Greek  towns in the Crimea, the Tadjik, Altai, Pskov and some other expeditions.The material discovered by them is of exceptional  value,  for not only does it throw  fresh light      on the problems of the history  of the art and culture, but it also serves  to enrich the Hermitage  collections.

Most helpful in the Museum’s research work is  the Hermitage Library  which contains  about   400 000 books, pamphlets,  periodicals, and is one of the largest   among the art libraries  in Russia. It was started in the 18th century and contains works  on all branches of fine and applied arts. In addition  to the Central Library each Department has  at its disposal    a subsidiary   library of special literature. Of these, the library  of the Hermitage exchanges books   with a number of Russian   and   foreign   museums. It is open to every student of art.

All these are but a few aspects  of the varied work carried out by the Museum and constantly  achieving still greater scope and a few forms, meeting  the growing cultural demands of the Russian people.

THE MAKING OF THE COLLECTION




         Although visited now by thousands of people the Museum traditionally retains the old name of the Hermitage attached to it in the 1760’s and meaning «a hermit’s dwelling», or «a solitary place». The name is due to the fact that the Hermitage was founded as a palace museum accessible only to the nearest of the near to the court.

A number of objects of which but a small part was later incorporated in the museum’s collections were acquired in different countries by Peter I. These were  antique statues Marine landscapes,  land a collection  of Siberian  ancient  gold buckles. However,  the foundation of the Hermitage is usually dated to the year 1764 when a collection of 225 pictures  was bought by Catherine II from the Prussian merchant Gotzkowsky.

A feature characteristic of the 18th century  accusations  was the purchase of large groups of paintings,    sometimes of   complete galleries, bought en blok  at the sales    in Western Europe.Count Bruhl’s collection acquired  in Dresden in 1769, the Gallery of Crozat, bought in Paris in 1772 and the gallery of  Lord  Walpole  acquired in London in 1779   were the most  prominent among the acquisitions made in the 18th century.   Together with numerous purchases of individual pictures, they  supplied  the museum  with most outstanding  canvases of the European school ,including  those by    Rembraandt,Rubens,Van  Dyck and other   eminent  artists, and made the Hermitage rank among  the finest  art galleries of Europe. Works , commissioned by  the Russian court  from European  painters also enriched the   Picture gallery.By 1785 the Museum  numbered 2658 paintings. Prints and drawings, cameos, coins and medals were likewise represented at the Hermitage.

       The acquisition of complete collections and of individual works of art   was continued  in the 19th century but on a more modest scale than during  the previous period. Among the most notable acquisitions of the 19th century were: Mathew Malmaison Gallery of the Empress  Josephine bought  in 1814; the collection of the English banker Coesvelt consisting mainly of Spanish paintings, purchased in Amsterdam the same year; as well as the paintings from the Barrbarigo Palace inVenice which gave the Museum its best Titians.

       As to the individual works of art, the acquisition in 1865 of Leonardo  da Vince’s «Madonna Litta»fromthe Duce of Litta collection and the purchase  of Raphael’s «Virgin and Child»  from the  Conestebite family in 1870, were important  landmarks in the growth of the treasures of the Hermitage.

       In 1885 the Hermitage received an important  collection of objects of applied art of the 12th – 26th centuries,   gathered  by Basilevsky;   , together with the Armoury transferred   from  Tsarskoe Selo,  notably enriched   the Museum   with a new type of material      

       The first decade  of the 20th century   witnessed the acquisition  of a magnificent collection     including 730 canvases by the Dutch and Flemish artists, which had been in the possession of the eminent Russian scientist    Semenov-Tienshansky. Another most important acquisition was Leonardo da Vinci’s «Madonna and Child» purchased  in 1914 from the family  of the architect L.Benois.

       The Great October Revolution created  highly favourable conditions for the further growth  of the  Museum  collections  and their systematic study. Since October 1917, due to the care taken by  Soviet Government  for the preservation of art treasures, the Museum was enriched with  a great number of first-class works of art. Among  these were the best pictures chosen by the Hermitage   the nationalised  private collections  such as  those formerly owned  by the  Yussupovs, the Shuvalovs, the Stroganovs; paintings transferred  from the  imperial palaces; art treasures, acquired by exchange from other museums within the country.    

       The policy of planned distribution of art treasures  among the museums carried  out by the state, enabled  the Hermitage  not only to fill up many gaps and deficiencies    by adding to  its picture gallery Italian  paintings  of  the 13th-15th centuries, works of the Netherlandish  school, and of the French school  of the 19th and 20th centuries but to form a museum  free from private taste , and made it possible to arrange the collections systematically. The accumulation of materials  which  had not been represented  in the museum in the pre-Revolutionary period ,led to the formation of new departments:  the department of the history of culture and art of the primitive society, of the culture and  art of the peoples of the East, and that of the history of Russian culture.

      He immense growth  of the collections made it  necessary to extend the exhibition 

space This is why the building of the Winter Palace was placed at the disposal of the Hermitage, the name  «The State Hermitage» being now applied to the whole great  museum  thus formed.

   





BRITISH  SCHOOL




  The Hermitage is one of the very few on the Continent   which contains   a special section  for English pictures.

   Portraiture, landscape painting  and satire art  in which England excelled ,  are  represented    by a number of first-class paintings and prints executed by the most outstanding artists of British School, mainly of the 18th century. A number of 17th-19th century works are on show too. There are also some notable specimens of applied art, among which is a fine group of objects  in silver and Wedgwood potteryware . English paintings of the 17th century  are extremely  rare outside England.The Hermitage possesses several  works of this period. These are: the Portrait of Oliver Cromwell  by Robert Walker, two portraits  by Peter Lely, of which the «Portrait of a Woman» reveals   the artist’s  sense of colour to great advantage; also the «Portrait of Grinling Gibbons»  by Godfrey Kneller, to name only the most outstanding  canvases.

       The collection has no paintings by William Hogarth, but some of his prints selected   from a large  and representative collection possessed  by the Museum are usually on show.

      Joshua Reynolds is represented  by four  canvases  all painted  in the  1780-s.

An interesting example of his late work is the «Infant Hercules strangling  the Serpents», which is an allegory of the youthful Russia vanquishing her enemies. The picture was commissioned from Reynolds by Catherine II, and was brought to Russia 

in 1789. In  1891 two other canvases were sent by Reynolds to Russia. One was the «Continence of   Scepic  Africanus» , which , as well as the «Infant Hercules», reveals Reynolds’s  conception of the grand style in art. The other was  «Venus  and Cupid»; presumably representing  Lady Hamilton .This is one of the versions of the piсture entitled «The  Snake in the Grass», owned by the National  Gallery, London

      Reynolds’s «Girl at a window» is a copy with slight modifications, from Rembrandt’s canvas bearing the same title, and owned by the Dulwich Gallery. It may be regarded as an example of Reynolds’s  study of the «old masters’» works.

      A fair idea of the British artists’ achievements in the field of portrait painting can be gained from the canvases by George Romney Thomas Gainsborough, John Opie, Henry Rdeburn, John Hoppner and John Russell, all marked by a vividness of expression and brilliance of execution typical of the British School of portrait painting in  the days when it had achieved a national tradition. Highly important is Gainsborough’s superb «Portrait of the Duchess of Beaufort» painted in a loose and most effective manner characteristic of his art in the late 1770’s. For charm of expression and brilliance of execution, it ranks among the masterpieces of the Museum.The «Tron Forge» by Joseph Wright of Derby is an interesting example of a new subject in English18th century art: the theme of labour and industry, which merged in the days of the Industrial Revolution.

     The few paintings of importance belonging to the British school of the 19th century include a landscape ascribed to John Constable; the «Boats at a shore» by Richard Parkers Bonington; the «Portrait of an old woman» by David Wilki, three portraits by Thomas Lawrence and portraits by George Daive, of which the unfinished «Portrait of the Admiral Shishkov» is the most impressive.

     The collection was largely formed at the beginning of the 20th century, a great part of it deriving from the Khitrovo collection  bequeathed to the Museum in 1916.

THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY




The Tretyakov Gallery  , founded by Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov (1832-1989), a Moscow  merchant and art patron, is a national treasury of Russian pre-revolutionary  and Russian art.

The Gallery’s centenary was widely  celebrated  throughout Russia in May 1956. Tretyakov spent his life collecting the works of Russian painters which reflected the spirit and ideas  of all progressive intellectual of his day. He began his collection  in 1856  with the purchase of «Temptation» (1856) by N.Shilder and  «Finnish Smugglers»  (1853) by V.Khudyakov. These paintings  are on permanent exhibition.  In order that his collection better reflect the centuries-old traditions of Russian art he acquired works of various epochs and also began a collection of antique icons. Tretyakov was one of the few people of his time who realised the great intrinsic value of ancient Russian art. He was on  friendly terms with many progressive , democratic Russian painters, frequenting their  studious, taking an active interest in their work, often suggesting themes for new  paintings, and helping them financially.  His collection grew rapidly;  by 1872 a special building was erected  to house it.

Tretyakov was aware of the national importance of his vast collection of Russian art and presented it to the city of Moscow in 1892, thus establishing  the first  museum in Russia. An excerpt from his will reads: «  Desirous of facilitating the establishment in my beloved city of useful institutions aimed at promoting the development  of art in Russia, and in order  to hand down to succeeding generations the collection I have amassed I hereby bequeath my entire picture gallery and the works of art contained    therein, as well as my  half  of the house, to the Moscow City Duma. By special decree of the Soviet Government, Issued on June 3 1918 and signed by V.I. Lenin, the Gallery was designated one of the most important educational  establishments of the country. It was also decreed  that the name of its founder be retained in honour of Tretyakov’s great services to Russian culture.

The Gallerie’s collection  has grown considerably in the years since the Revolution. In  1893 it consisted of 1805 works of art, but by 1956 the number had increased   to 35276.The early Russian Art  department and the collections of sculpture and drawings were  considerably enlarged, and an entirely  new department- Soviet Art- was created. By a Government decision of 1956, a new house is to be built for the Gallery within the next few years.

At present,  the more interesting  and distinctive works, tracing the development of Russian  art through nearly ten centuries, are exhibit in the Gallery’s  54 halls.

BUCKINGHAM  PALACE




Buckingham palace is the official  London residence of Her Majesty The Queen and as such is one of the best known and most potent symbols of the British monarchy. Yet it has been a royal residence  for only just over two hundred and thirty years and a palace for much less; and its name, known the world over, is owed not to a monarch but to an English Duke.

Buckingham House was built for John, first Duke of Buckingham, between 1702 and 1705. It was sold to the Crown in 1762. Surprisingly, since it was a large house in a commanding position, it was never intended to be the principal residence  of the monarch.

Although King George III modernised and enlarged the house considerably in the 1760s and 17770s, the transformations that give the building its present palatial character were carried out for King George IY by Nash in the 1820s,  by Edward Blore  for King  William IY and  Queen Victoria  in the 1830s and 40s, and by James Pennethoooorne in the 1850s.

In the reign of King Edward YII, much of the present white and gold decoration was substituted for the richly coloured 19th century  schemes of Nash and Blore; and in the 1920s, Queen Mary used  the firm of White Allom to redecorate a number of rooms.

The rooms open to visitors are used principally  for official entertainment .These include  Receptions and State Banquets, and it is on such occasions, when  the rooms are filled with  flowers and thronged with  formally dressed  guests and liveried  servants,  that the Palace is seen at its most splendid  and imposing. But of course the Palace is also  far  more than just the London home of the Royal Family and a place of lavish entertainment. It has become the administrative centre of the monarchy where,  among a multitude of  engagements, Her Majesty receives foreign  Heads of  State, Commonwealth leaders and representatives of the Diplomatic Corps and  conducts   Investitures, and where the majority of the Royal Houshold, consisting of six main Departments and a staff of about three hundred people, have  their offices.

THE QUEEN’S HOUSE



The Duke of  Buckingham’s house,  which George III purchased  in 1762, was designed by the architect  William  Winde, possibly  with the advice of John Talman, in 1702.

The new house, a handsome  brick  and stone mansion  crowned  with statuary   and  joined by colonnades to outlying wings, looked eastward down the Mall and  westwards over the splendid canal  and  formal gardens, laid out for the Duke by  Henry Wise  partly on the site of the royal Mulberry  Garden. This garden had been  part of an ill-fated attempt by James I to introduce a silk industry to rival that of France by planting thousands of mulberry trees.

The building and its setting were well suited to the dignity of the Duke, a former  Lord Chamberlain  and suitor of Princess Anne, and of his wife, an illegitimate  daughter  of James II, whose  eccentricity and delusions of grandeur earned her the nickname of «Princess Buckingham».

The principal rooms, then as now, were on the first floor. They were reached by a magnificent   staircase with ironwork by Jean  Tijou  and walls  painted  by  Louis  Laguerre  with the story of Dido and Aeneas.

Under the architectural direction of Sir William  Chambers  and over the following  twelve years  The Queen’s House was  gradually  modernised and enlarged to provide  accommodation   for the King and Queen  and their children, as well as  their  growing  collection  of books, pictures  and works  of art.

QUEEN VICTORIA’S PALACE



At the age of eighteen, Queen Victoria became the first Sovereign to live at Buckingham Palace.

John Nash   had rightly  predicted that the Palace would prove too small, but this was a fault  capable of remedy. The absence of a chapel was made good after the Queen’s marriage to Prince Albert  of Saxe-Coburg  and Gotha, when the south  conservatory was converted in 1843.

In 1847 the architect Edward Blore added the new East Front. Along the first floor  Blore placed  the Principal  Corridor, a gallery 240 feet long overlooking the Quadrangle and divided into three  sections by folding doors of mirror glass. It links the Royal Corridor on the south, and opens into suites of semi-state rooms facing the Mall and St James’s Park. Blore introduced into the  East Front some of the finest  fittings from George IY’s Royal Pavilion at Brighton, which Queen Victoria ceased to use after the purchase of Osborn House in 1845.

The new building rendered the Marble Arch both  functionally  and ornamentally   dispensable, and  it was removed in 1850 to its present site at the north-east corner of Hyde Park.


THE STATE ROOMS



Most of the principal State Rooms  are located on to first floor of Bughingham Palace. They are approached   from Nash’s Grand Hall which  in its unusual low proportions echoes the original hall of Bughingham House. The coupled columns which surround the Hall are each composed of a single block of veined Carrara marble enriched with Corinthian capitals of gilt bronze made by Samuel Parker.

The Grand Staircase, built by Nash on  site of the original  stairs, divides theatrically into three  flights  at the first landing, two flights  curving  upwards to the Guard room. The gilded balustrade was made by Samuel Parker in 1828-30. The walls are set with full-length  portraits which include George III and Queen Charlotte by Beechey,William IY by Lawrence and Queen Adelaide by Archer Shee. The sculptured wall panels were designed by Thomas Stothard  and the etched glass  dome was made by Wainwright and Brothers.

GALLERY



The picture Gallery, the largest room  in the Palace, was formed by Nash in the   area of Queen Charlotte’s old apartments. Nash’s ceiling,  modified by Blore in the 1830s, was altered by Sir Aston Webb in 1914.

As there are many loans to exhibitions, the arrangement is subject to periodic change. However the Gallery normally contains works by Van Dyck, Rubens, Cuyp and Rembrandt among others. The chimneypieces are carved with heads of artists and the marble group at the end, by Chantrey, represents Mrs Jordan, mistress of William.

From the Suilk Tapestry Room the route leads via the East Gallery, Cross and West  Galleries  to the State Dining Room. This room is used  on formal occasions and is hung with portraits of GeorgeIY, his parents, grandparents  and great-grandparents.  


THE  PALACE AT WORK



BUCKINNGHAM Palace is certainly one of the  most  famous  buildings in the world, known to millions as Queen’s  home. Yet it is very much a working building and centre of the large  office complex that is required for the administration of the modern monarchy.

Although foreign ambassadors are officially accredited to the Court of St James’s

and some ceremonies, such as the Proclamation of a new Sovereign, still take place at St James’s Palace,  all official business now effectively takes place at Buckingham Palace.

In some ways the Palace resembles a small town. For the 300 people who work  there, there is a Post  office and a  police station, staff canteens and dinning rooms. There is a special three-man security team equipped with a fluoroscope, which examines every piece of mail that arrives at the Palace.

There is also a soldier who is responsible for making sure the Royal Standard is flying whenever The Queen is in residence, and to make sure it is taken down  when she leaves. It is his job to watch for the moment when the Royal limousine turns into the Palace gates - at the very second The Queen enters her Palace, the Royal Standard is hoisted.

Buckingham Palace is not only the name of the Royal Family but also the workplace of an army of secretaries, clerks and typists, telephonists, carpenters and plumbers etc.

The business of monarchy never stops and the light is often shining from the window of the Queen’s study late at night as she works on the famous «boxes», the red and blue  leather cases in which are delivered the State papers, official letters and reports which  follow  her whenever she is in the world.

There can hardly be a single one of 600 or so rooms in the Palace that is not in more or less constant  use.

The  senior member of the  Royal Household is the Lord Chamberlain. In addition to the role of overseeing all the departments of the Household, he has a wide variety of responsibilities,  including all ceremonial duties relating to the Sovereign, apart from the wedding, coronation  and funeral of the monarch. .These remain the responsibility of the  Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk. The Lord Chamberlain’s Office has the greatest variety of responsibilities. It looks after all incoming visits by  overseas Heads of State and the administration of the Chapels Royal. It also supervises the appointment of Pages of Honour , the Sergeants of Arms, the Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps, the Master of the Queen’s  Music, and the Keeper of the Queen’s Swans.

The director of the Royal Collection is responsible for one of the finest collections of works of art in the  world. The Royal Collection is a vast assemblage of works of art of all kinds, comprising some 10,000 pictures, enamels and miniatures, 20,000 drawings, 10,000   watercolours and 500,000 prints, and many thousands of pieces of furniture, sculpture, glass, porcelain, arms and armour, textiles, silver, gold and jewellery.

It has largely been formed by succeeding sovereigns, consorts  and other members  of the Royal Family in the three hundred years  since the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660.

The Collection is presently housed in twelve principal locations open to the public, which include Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, Windsor Castle, The Palace of Holyroodhouse and Osborne House.

In addition a substantial number of objects are on indefinite loan to the British Museum, National Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum  and Museum of London.

Additional access to the Royal Collection is provided by means of exhibitions, notably at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, opened in 1962.

WINDSOR  CASTLE




Windsor Castle is the oldest royal residence to have remained in continuous use by the  monarchs  of Britain and is in many ways an architectural epitome  of the history of the nation. Its skyline of battlements, turrets and the great Round Tower is instantly recognised throughout the world. The Castle covers an area of nearly  thirteen acres and contains, as well as a royal palace, a magnificent collegiate  church  and the homes or workplaces of a large number of people ,including the Constable and  Governor of the Castle, the Military Knights of Windsor and their families, etc.

The Castle was founded by William the Conqueror  c. 1080 and was conceived as one of a chain of fortifications built as a defensive ring round London.

Norman castles  were built to a standard plan  with an artificial earthen   mound supporting a tower or keep, the entrance to which was protected by an outer fenced courtyard or baily. Windsor is the most notable example of a particularly distinctive version of this basic plan  developed   for use  on a ridge site. It comprises a central mote with  a large bialy to either side of it rather than just on  one side as was more than usual.

As first built, the Castle was entirely  defensive, constructed of earth and timber, but easy access from London and the proximity of the Castle to the old royal hunting forest   to the south soon recommended it as a royal residence. Henry I is known to have  had domestic quarterswithin the castle as early as 1110  and Henry converted the Castle into a palace. He built two separate  sets of royal apartments within the fortified enclosure: a public or official state residence in the Lower Ward,  with a hall  where he could entertain his court  and the barons on great occasions, and a smaller private residence on the North side of the Upper Ward for the exclusive occupation of himself and his family.

Henry II was a great builder at  all his residences. He began to replace the old timber outer walls  of the Upper Ward with a hard heath stone found ten miles south of Windsor. The basic curtain wall round the Upper Ward, much modified by later alterations and improvements, dates from Henry II’s time, as does the old part of the stone keep, known as the Round Tower , on top of William’s the Conqueror’s mote. The reconstruction of the curtain wall round the Lower Ward was completed over the next sixty years. The well-preserved section visible from the High street with its three half-round towers was built by   Henry III in the 1220s.He took a keen personal interest in all his projects  and carried out extensive works at Windsor. In his time it became one of the three principal    royal  palaces alongside those at Westminster   and Winchester.  He rebuilt Henry II’s  apartments in the Lower Ward   and added there  a large new chapel, all forming a  coherently planned  layout round  a  courtyard   with a cloister; parts survive embedded in later structures in the Lower  Ward. He also   further improved the royal private apartments in the Upper Ward.

The outstanding  medieval  expansion of Windsor, however,  took place in the reign of Edward III.  His huge building project at the Castle was probably the most  ambitious single  architectural  scheme in the whole  history of the English royal       residences, and cost the astonishing total of 50,772 pounds. Rebuilt with the proceeds of the King’s military  triumphs, the Castle  was converted  by  Edward III into a  fortified  palace redolent of chivalry The stone  base was and military glory, as the centre of his court and the seat of his newly founded Order of the Garter .Even today, the massive Gothic architecture of Windsor reflects  Edward III’s  medieval ideal of Christian, chivalric monarchy as clearly as Louis XIY’s Versailles represents baroque absolutism.

The Lower Ward was reconstructed, the old  royal lodgings being transformed into the College of St George, and a new cloister, which still survives, built with traceeried windows. In addition there were to be   twenty-six  Poor Knights. Henry III’s  chapel was made over for their use,  rebuilt and renamed   St George’s Chapel.

The reconstruction of the Upper Ward  was begun in 1357  with new royal lodgings built of stone under the direction of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester. An inner gatehouse with cylindrical towers was built at the entrance to the Upper Ward.Stone-vaulted undercrofts  supported  extensive royal  apartments on the first floor  with separate sets of rooms for the King and the Queen ( as was the tradition of the English royal palaces),arranged round   two inner courtyards later known as Brick Court and Horn Court .Along the south side, facing the quadrangle, were the Great Hall and Royal Chapel end to end. Edward IY built the present larger St George’s Chapel to the west of Henry III’s.Henry YII remodelled the old chapel ( now the Albert Memorial  Chapel) at its  east end;  he also added a new range to the west of the State Apartments which Elizabeth I extended by a long gallery .

During the  English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century,  the Castle was seized by Parliamentary forces who ill-treated  the buildings and used part  of them as a prison for  Royalists.

At the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 Charles II was determined to reinstate     the old glories of the Crown  after the interval of the Commonwealth. Windsor was his favourite non-metropolitan   palace and it was the only one which could be effectively garrisoned.

The architect Hugh May was appointed in 1673 to supervise the work and over the next eleven years  the Upper Ward and State Apartments were reconstructed. The result was both ingenious and magnificent, making the Upper Ward the most unusual palace in baroque Europe.

The interior  was a rich contrast to the austerity of the exterior and formed the first and  grandest  sequence of baroque State Apartments in England.The ceilings were painted by Antonio  Verrio, an Italian artist brought   from Paris by the Duke of Montagu, Charles II’s  ambassador to Louis XIY. The walls were wainscoted in oak and  festooned with brilliant virtuoso carvings by Grinling Gibbons and Henry  Phillips of  fruit, flowers, fish  and birds The climax of  Charles  II’s  reconstruction  was St George’s Hall and  the King’s Chapel with murals by Verrio. In the former there were historical scenes of Edward III and the Black Prince, as well as Charles II in Grater robes enthroned in glory, and  in the latter Christ’s miracles and the Last Supper. All were destroyed by Wyatville inn 1829.  The source of inspiration  for the new rooms at Windsor was   the France of Louis XIY, but the use of wood  rather than  coloured marbles gave Windsor a different character and established  a fashion  which  was copied in many English country houses.

William III and the early Hanoverian kings spent more time at Hampton Court than at Windsor. Windsor, however, came back into its own in the reign of George III, who disliked Hampton Court, which had unhappy memories for him

From 1777 George III reconstructed the Queen’s Lodge to the south of the Castle. He also restored St George’s Chapel  in the 1780s.At the same time  a new state entrance and Gothic staircase   were constructed  for the State Apartments.

As well as his work in the Castle, George III modernised  Frogmore in the Home Park  as a retreat for his wife, Queen Charlotte, and reclaimed some of the  Great Park    for agriculture. The King designed  a special  Windsor uniform  of blue cloth with red and gold facings, a version of which is still   worn on occasions today. The King  loved the Castle and its romantic associations. In 1805 he revived the formal ceremonies of installation of Knights of the Garter at Windsor.

When George  IY inherited  the throne, he  shared his  father’s romantic architectural enthusiasm  for Windsor  and  determined to continue the Gothic transformation and the creation of  convenient, comfortable  and splendid new royal apartments.

In  many ways Windsor  Castle enjoyed  its  apogee in the reign of  Queen Victoria.. She spent the largest portion of every  year  at Windsor, and in her reign it enjoyed the position of principal palace of the British monarchy  and the focus of the British Empire as well as nearly the whole of royal Europe. The Castle was visited by heads of state from all over the world and was the scene of a series of splendid state visits. On these occasions the state rooms were  used for their original purpose by royal guests. The visits of King Louis Philippe in 1844 and  the Emperor Napoleon III inn 1855 were especially successful. They were invested at Windsor with the Order of the Garter in formal  ceremonies, as on other occasions were King Victor Emanuel I  of Italy  and   the Emperor William I of Germany. For the most of the twentieth century Windsor Castle survived as it was in the nineteenth century. The Queen and her family  spend most of their private weekends at the Castle.

A distinctive feature of hospitality at Windsor Castle  are the invitations  to «dine and sleep» which go back to Queen Victoria’s time  and  encompass people prominent in many  walks of life including   The Queen’s ministers.  On such occasions, The Queen shows her guests a specially chosen exhibition of treasures from the Royal Collection.

THE GALLERY,THE CHINA MUSEUM



The central vaulted undercroft, originally created by James Wyatt and extended in the same style by Jeffry Wyatville to serve as the principal entrance hall to the State Apartments, was cut off when the Grand Staircase was reoriented in the reign of Queen Victoria. It has recently been redesigned and now houses a changing exhibition of works of art from   the Royal Collection, which include Old Master drawings from the world-famous Print Room in the Royal Library.

The carved Ionic capitals of the columns survive from Hugh May’s alterations for Charles  II. In cases round the walls  are displayed magnificent china services from leading English and European porcelain manufacturers: Serves, Meiden, Copenhagen, Naples, Rockingham and Worchester.  These are still used for royal banquets and other important occasions.

There are some famous paintings in Windsor Castle:  Van Dyke’s  «Triple Portrait of Charles I» painted to send to Bernie in Italy to enable him to sculpture a bust of the King; Colonel John St.Leger, a friend of the Prince Regent, by Gainsborough;Vermeer’s portrait of a lady at the virginals;  The five eldest  children of Charles I by Van Dyke; John Singleton Copley, the American artist, painted the three youngest daughters of George III and Queen Charlotte:Princesses Mary, Sophia and Amelia, none of whom left legitimate descendants and  The Campo SS. Giovanniie Paolo Canaletto etc.

ST GEORGE’S CHAPEL



St George’s Chapel is the spiritual home of the Prodder of the Garter, Britain’s senior Order  of Chivalry, founded by King Edward III in 1348. St George is the patron saint of the Order.

The architecture of the Chapel ranks among the finest examples of Perpendicular Gothic, the late medieval style of English architecture. Unlike most of the other great churches ,St George’s  Chapel has its principal or «show» front on the south  , facing the Henry YIII gate and running almost the length of the Lower Ward.

As Sovereign of the Order of the Garter, The Queen attends a service in the Chapel in June each year, together with the Knights  and Ladies of the Order. Today  thirteen Military Knights of Windsor represent the Knights of the Garter in ST George’s Chapel at regular services. Ten sovereigns are buried in the Chapel, as are buried in the Chapel, as  are other members  of the royal family, many represented by magnificent tombs.

 

The Albert Memorial Chapel

The richly decorated interior is a Victorian masterpiece, created by Sir George Gilbert Scott for Queen Victoria in 1863-73 to commemorate her husband Albert.

The vaulted ceiling is decorated in gold mosaic by Antonio Salviati. The figures  in the false west window represent sovereigns, clerics and others associated with St George’s Chapel. The inlaid  marble panels around  the lower walls depict scenes     from  Scripture.

This was the site of one of the  Castle’s earliest chapels, built in 1240 by King Henry III and adapted by    King Edward III in the  1350s   as the first chapel of the College of St George  and   the Order of the Garter. When the existing St George’s Chapel was built in 11475-15528, this   small chapel fell into disuse. Subsequent plans  to turn it into a royal   mausoleum came to nothing.

In  1863 Queen Victoria ordered  its complete restoration and redecoration as a temporary resting place for Prince Albert.

The Chapel is now dominated by Alfred Gilbert’s  tomb  of the Duke of Clarence and Avandale  who died  in 1892.
The Great Park

The Great Park of Windsor, covering about 4,800 acres,  has evolved out of the Saxon and medieval hunting forest. It is connected to the Castle  by an avenue of nearly   3 miles, known as the  Long Walk, planted by King Charles II in 1685   and replanted  in 1945. The Valley Gardens are open  all year round

WESTMINSTER  ABBEY



Westminster Abbey is one of the most  famous, historic and widely visited churches not only in Britain but in the whole Christian world. There are other reasons for its fame apart from its beauty and its vital role as a centre of the Christian faith in one of the world’s most important    capital cities.    These include the facts that since 1066  every sovereign apart from Edward Y and Edward YIII  has been crowned here and that for many centuries it was also the burial place of kings, queens and princes.

The royal connections began even earlier than the present Abbey,   for it was Edward the Confessor, sometimes called the last of the English kings(1042-66) and canonised in 1163, who  established an earlier church on this site. His great Norman Abbey  was built  close to his palace on Thorney Island. It was completed in 1065 and stood surrounded by the many ancillary buildings  needed by the community of Benedictine monks   who passed their lives of prayer   here. Edward’s death near the time of his Abbey’s consecration made it natural for his burial  place to be by the High Altar.

Only 200 years later, the Norman east end of the Abbey was demolished and rebuilt on the orders of Henry III, who had a great devotion to Edward the Confessor and wanted to honour him. The central focus of the new Abbey was a magnificent shrine to house St Edward’s body ; the remains of this shrine,  dismantled at the Reformation but later reerected  in rather  a clumsy and piecemeal way, can still be seen behind the High Altar today.

The new Abbey remained incomplete until 1376, when the rebuilding of the Nave began; it was not finished until 150 years later, but the master masons carried on a similar  thirteenth-century Gothic, French-influenced design, as that of Henry III’s initial work, over that period, giving the whole a beautiful harmony of style.

In the early sixteenth century the Lady Chapel was rebuilt  as the magnificent Henry YII Chapel; with its superb fan-vaulting it is one of Westminster’s great treasures.

In the mid-eighteenth century the last malor additions - the two western towers designed by Hawksmoor - were made to the main fabric of the Abbey.
THE  NAVE was begun by Abbot Litlington  who  financed  the work   with money left by Cardinal Simon Langham, his predecessor, for the use of the monastery. The master mason in charge of the work was almost  certainly the great Henry Yevele. His design depended on the extra  strength given to the structure by massive flying buttresses.  These enabled   the roof  to be raised   to a height of 102 feet. The stonework of the vaulting has been cleaned  and the bosses gilded in recent years.

At the west end of the Nave is a magnificent  window filled with stained glass of 1735, probably designed by Sir James Thornhill (1676-1734).(He also painted the interior of the dome in St Paul’s Cathedral} The design shows Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with fourteen prophets,  and  underneath are  the arms  of  King Sebert, Elizabeth I, George II, Dean Wilcocks and the Collegiate Church of St Peter in Westminster.

Also at the west end of the Nave is the grave of the Unknown Warrior. The idea for such   a memorial is said  to have come  from a British  chaplain  who noticed, in a back garden at Armeentieeres, a grave with the simple inscription: «An unknown British soldier». In 1920 the body of another unknown soldier was brought back from the battlefields to be reburied in the Abbey on 11 November. George Y and Queen Mary  and many other members of the royal family attended the service, 100 holders of the Victoria Cross lining the Nave as a Guard of Honour. On a nearby pillar hangs the Congressional Medal, the highest  award which can be conferred by the United St ates.

From the Nave roof hang  chandeliers, both giving light  and in daylight reflecting it from their  hundreds of pedant crystals.  They were a gift to mark   the 900th anniversary of the Abbey and are of Waterford glass.

At the east end of the Nave is the  screen separating it from the Choir. Designed by  the then  Surveyor, Edward Blore, in 1834, it is the fourth screen to be placed here; the wrought-iron gates, however, remain from a previous screen. Within recent years the screen  has been painted and glided.
THE CHOIR was originally the part of the Abbey in which the monks worshipped, but there is  now  no trace  of the pre- Reformation fittings, for in the late eighteenth century Kneene,  the then Surveyor, removed the thirteenth-century stalls and designed a smaller Choir. This was in turn destroyed in the mid-nineteenth century by Edward Blore, who created the present Choir in Victoria Gothic  style  and removed the partitions which until then had blocked off the transepts

It is here that the choir of about twenty-two boys   and twelve   Lay Vicars  sings the daily services. The boys are educated at the Choir School attached to the Abbey ;mention of such a school   is made  in the fifteenth century and it may be even older in origin. For some centuries it was linked with Westminster School, but became independent in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Organ was originally built by  Shrider in 1730. Successive rebuildings  in 1849,1884,1909,,and 1937  and extensive work  in 1983 have resulted  in the present instrument.
THE SANCTUARY is the heart of the Abbey, where the High Altar stands The altar and the reredos behind it, with a mosaic of the Last Supper, were designed by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1867. Standing on the altar  are two candlesticks, bought with money bequeathed by a serving-maid,  Sarah Hughes, in the seventeenth century. In front of the altar, but protected by carpeting, is another of the Abbey’s treasures - a now-very-worn  pavement dating from the  thirteenth century. The method of its decoration is known as Cosmati work, after the Italian family who developed the technique of inlaying intricate designs made up of  small pieces of coloured marble into a plain  marble ground.
THE NORTH TRANSEPT, to the left of the Sanctuary, has a beautiful rose window designed by Sir James  Thornhill, showing eleven Apostles. The Transept  once led to Solomon’s Porch and now leads  to the nineteenth-century North Front.
THE HENRY YII CHAPEL, beyond the  apse, was begun in 1503 as a burial place  for Henry YI, on the orders of Henry YII, but it was Henry.YII himself who was finally buried here, in an elaborate tomb. The master mason, who designed the chapel    was  probably  Robert Vertue his brother William constructed the vault at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 1505 and this experience may have helped in the creation of the magnificent vaulting erected here  a few years later.

The chapel has an apse and side aisles which are fan-vaulted, and  the central section  is roofed with extraordinarily  intricate and finely-detailed circular vaulting ,embellished with more Tudor badges and with carved pendants, which is literally breath-taking in the perfection of its beauty and artistry.

Beneath the windows, once filled with glass painted by Bernard Flower of which  only fragments now remain, are ninety-four of the original 107 statues of saints, placed in richly embellished niches. Beneath these, in turn, hang the banners of the living Knights Grand  Cross of the Order of the Bath, whose chapel this is. When the Order was founded in 1725, extra  stalls and seats  were added to those originally provided. To the stalls are attached plates recording the names and arms of past Knights of the Order, while under the seats can be seen finely carved misericords.

The  altar, a copy of the sixteenth-century   altar  incorporates  two of the original pillars and under its canopy  hangs a fifteenth-century Madonna and Child by Vivarini.

In the centre of the apse, behind the altar, stand the tomb of Henry YII and Elizabeth of York, protected by a bronze screen.  The tomb was the work of Torrigiani and the effigies of the king and queen are finely executed in gilt bronze.

In later years many more royal burials took place in the chapel. Mary I,  her half-sister Elizabeth I and half-brother Edward YI all lie here The Latin inscription on thetomb - on which only Elizabeth Ist effigy rests - reads: «Consorts both in throne and  grave, here rest  we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in the hope of one Resurrection».

In the south asle lies Mary Queen of Scots, mother of James Yi and I, who brought her body from Peterborough and gave her a tomb even more magnificent than that which he had erected for his cousin Elizabeth.I.

In the same aisle  lies Henry YII’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond. Her effigy, a bronze   by Torrigiani, shows her in old age. She was known for her charitable works and for her intellect - she founded Christ’s  and St John’s Colleges at Cambridge -  and these activities  are recorded in the inscription composed by Erasmus. Also  in this aisle  is the  tomb of Margaret, Countess of Lennox.
THE CHAPEL OF ST EDWARD THE CONFESSOR, containing his shrine,  lies  east of the Sanctuary at the heart of the Abbey. It is closed off from the west   by a stone screen, probably of fifteenth-century date, carved with scenes from the life of Edward the Confessor; it is approached from the east via a bridge from the Henry YII Chapel.

The shrine seen today within the chapel is only a ghost of its former self.  It originally had three parts: a stone base decorated with Cosmati work, a gold feretory containing the saint’s coffin, a canopy above which could be raised to reveal the feretory or lowered to protect it. Votive offerings of gold and jewels were given to enrich the feretory over the centuries. To this shrine came many pilgrims, and the sick were frequently left beside it overnight in the hope of a cure. All this ceased at the Reformation The shrine was dismantled  and stored  by the monks; the gold feretory was taken away from them, but they were allowed to rebury the  saint  elsewhere in the Abbey.

It was during the reign of Mary I that a partial restoration of the shrine took place. The stone base was re-assembled, the coffin was placed, in the absence of  a  feretory, in the top part  of the stone base and the canopy positioned on top. The Chapel   has a Cosmati floor, similar to that before the High  Altar, and a blank  space   in the design shows where the  shrine once stood; it also indicates that   the shrine     was originally raised   up on a platform, making the canopy visible beyond    the western  screen. The canopy of the shrine has recently been restored, and hopefully        one day    the rest of the shrine will also be restored.

And within the chapel can be seen the Coronation Chair  and the tombs of five  kings and four queens. At the eastern end is the tomb and  Chantey  Chapel of Henry  Y, embellished   with carvings including    scenes of  Henry Y’s coronation.  The effigy of the king once had a silver head and silver regalia, and was covered in silver regalia, and was covered in silver gilt, but this precious metal was stolen in  1546.

         Eleanor of  Castle, first  wife of Edward I, lies beside the Chapel. Her body was carried  to Westminster   from Lincoln, a memorial cross being erected at each place where the funeral procession rested.

         Beside her lies Henry III, responsible for the rebuilding of the Abbey, in a tomb of Purbeck  marble. Next to his tomb is  that of Edward I. Richard II  and Anne of Bohemia, Edward III and Philippa of Hainnault, and Catherine de Valois, Henry Y’s Queen, also lie in this chapel.

       

 THE  SOUTH  TRANSEPT is lit by a large rose window, with glass dating from 1902. Beneath it, in the angles above the right and left arches, are two of the finest carvings in the Abbey, depicting sensing angels. In addition   to the many monuments there are two fine late thirteen-century wall-paintings, uncovered in 1936, to be seen by the door leading into St Faith’s Chapel. They depict Christ  showing  his wounds to Doubting Thomas, and St Christopher. Beside the south wall  rises the dormer staircase, once used by the monks going  from their  dormitory to the Choir for their  night offices.
POET’S  CORNER
        One of the most well-known parts of Westminster Abbey, Poet’s Corner can be found in the south Transept. It was not originally designated as the burial place of writers, playwrights and poets; the first poet to be buried here, Geoffrey Chaucer, was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey because he had been Clerk of Works to the Palace of Westminster, not because he had written the Canterbury Tales. However, the inscription over his grave, placed there by William Caxton - the famous printer whose press was just beyond the transept wall - mentioned that he was a poet.

        Over   150 years  later, during the flowering   of English literature in the sixteenth century,   a more magnificent tomb was erected  to Chaucer by Nicholas Brigham and in 1599 Edmund Spencer was laid to rest nearby. These two tombs began a tradition which developed over succeeding centuries.

         Burial or commemoration in the abbey did not always occur at  or soon after the time of death - many of those whose monuments now stand here had to wait a number of years for recognition; Byron, for example, whose lifestyle caused a   scandal although his poetry  was much admired, died in 1824  but was finally given a memorial only in 1969. Even Shakespeare, buried at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616, had to wait until 1740 before a monument, designed by William Kent, appeared in Poet’s Corner. Other poets and writers, well-known in their own day, have now vanished into obscurity, with only their monuments to show that they were once famous.

        Conversely, many whose writings are still appreciated today have never been memorialised in Poet’s Corner, although the reason may not always be clear. Therefore a resting place or memorial in Poet’s Corner should perhaps not be seen as a final statement of a writer or   poet’s literary worth, but more as a reflection of their public standing at the time of death - or as an indication of the fickleness of Fate.

        Some of the most famous to lie here, in addition to those  detailed on the next two pages include BenJonson, John Dryden, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning and John Masefield, among the poets, and William Camden, Dr Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, Richard Brinsley Sheridan,  Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy among the writers.

        Charles Dickens’s grave attracts particular interest. As a writer who drew attention to the hardships born by the socially deprived  and who advocated the abolition of the slave trade,   he won enduring fame    and gratitude and today, more than 110 years later, a wreath is still laid on his tomb on the anniversary of his death each year.

        Those  who have memorials here, although they are buried elsewhere, include among the poets John Milton, William Wordworth, Thomas Gray, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Robert  Burns, William Blake, T.S. Eliot and among  the writers Samuel Butler, Jane Austen, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Walter Scott, John Ruskin, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte and Henry James.

     By no  means  all those buried in the South Transept are poets or writers, however. Several of Westminster’s  former Deans, Archdeacons, Prebendaries  and Canons lie here, as do John Keble, the historian  Lord  Macaulay, actors David Garrick, Sir  Henry Irving and Mrs Hannah Pritchard, and, among many others, Thomas Parr, who was said to be 152 years of age when he died in 1635, having seen  ten sovereigns on the throne during his long life.

CORONATIONS IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY




     Coronation have taken place at Westminster since at least 1066, when William the Conqueror arrived in London  after his victory at the battle of Hastings. Whether or not Harold, his predecessor as monarch, had been crowned in Edward the Confessor’s Abbey  is uncertain - coronations do not seem to have had a fixed location  before 1066, though  several monarchs were crowned  at Kingston-upon-Thames, where the King’s Stone still exists - but William was determined to reinforce his victory, which gave him the right to rule by conquest, with the sacred hallowing of his sovereignty which    the coronation  ceremony would give him. He was crowned in the old Abbey - then recently  completed  and housing Edward the Confessor’s body- on Christmas Day 1066.

      The service to-day has four parts: first comes the Introduction ,consisting of: the entry of the Sovereign into the Abbey; the formal recognition of the  right of the Sovereign to rule - when  the Archbishop presents the Sovereign  to the congregation and asks them if they agree  to the  service proceeding, and they respond with an   assent; the oath, when the Sovereign promises to respect and govern in accordance  with the lows of his or her subjects and to uphold the Protestant reformed Church of England  and Scotland; and the presentation of the Bible to the Sovereign, to be relied on as the source of all wisdom and low. Secondly, the Sovereign is anointed with holy oil, seated on the Coronation Chair. Thirdly, the Sovereign is invested with the royal robes and insignia, then crowned  with  St Edward’s   crown. The final ceremony consists of the enthronement of the Sovereign on a throne placed on a raised platform, bringing him or her into full view of the assembled company for the first time, and there  he or she receives  the homage of the Lords Spiritual, the  Lords Temporal and the congregation, representing the people of the realm.

     The service has changed little - English replaced Latin as the main language used during the ceremony following Elizabeth Ist coronation, and from 1689 onwards the coronation ceremony has been set within a service of Holy Communion  although indeed this was a return to ancient custom rather than the creation of a new precedent).

      Coronations  have not always followed an identical pattern. Edward YI,  for example, was crowned no less than three times, with three different crowns placed in turn upon his head; while at Charles I’s coronation there was a misunderstanding and, instead of the congregational assent  following the Recognition Question, there was dead silence, the congregation  having finally to be told to respond - an ill omen for the future, as it turned out. Charles II’s coronation, following on the greyness of the puritan Commonwealth, was a scene of brilliant colour and great splendour. As the old regalia  had been destroyed, replacements were made for the ceremony, and the clergy were robed in rich red copes - the same copes are still used in the Abbey

      George IY saw his coronation as an opportunity  for a great theatrical spectacle and spent vast sums of money on it. He wore  an auburn  wig with ringlets, with a huge plumed hat on top, and designed his own robes for the procession into the Abbey. After the coronation, because Queen Caroline had been forcibly excluded from the ceremony, the crowds in the streets were extremely hostile to him and he had to return to Carlton House by an alternative route.

      In complete contrast, William IY  took a lot of persuading before he would agree to have  a coronation   at all, and the least possible amount of money was spent no it - giving it the name the «penny coronation». Despite his dislike of extravagant show and ceremony, he still brought a slightly theatrical touch to the scene by living up to his nickname of the «sailor king» and appearing , when disrobed for the Anointing, in the full-dress uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet.

       The last three coronations have demonstrated  continuing respect  for the religious significance of the ceremony and recognition of the importance of such a public declaration by Sovereign of his or her personal dedication to the service of the people.

       At the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 , for the first time the service was televised and millions of her subjects could see and hear the ceremony taking place. It is possible that few watching realised just how far back into history the roots of that historic ceremony starched, and how little fundamental change had occurred over the centuries.
LIST  OF WORDS
mention                                              упоминание

stock                                                           хранилище

masterpiece                                                  шедевр

mankind                                                       человечество

satisfy                                                удовлетворять

aesthetic                                             эстетический

to be in touch with                                        быть в контакте с

script                                                 рукопись

humdrum                                                     суета

acquire                                               обретать
LIST  OF  WORDS

 

rank among                                        быть в ряду с

tаke up                                               поглощать

stretch                                                простираться

 arrangement                                       расположение

fabulous                                             сказочный

span                                                   миг, пролет

applied art                                          прикладное искусство

 enamel                                              эмаль

lace                                                    кружево

ivory                                                  слоновая кость

excavation                                          раскопки

scope                                                 размах
 LIST  OF  WORDS
accessible                                          доступный

merchant                                            купец

purchase                                            покупка

favourable                                          благоприятный

due to the care                                    благодаря заботе

fill up                                                 заполнять

 gap                                                   пробел

deficiencies                                        недостаток

 accumulation                                     накопление

at smb’s disposal                               в чьем-либо распоряжении
LIST  OF  WORDS

 

portraiture                                          портретная живопись

landscape                                           пейзаж

potteryware                                         фарфор

possess                                                       обладать

vanquish                                            преодолевать

 presumably                                       вероятно

gain                                                             получать

vividness                                                     очевидность

merge                                                          граничить

ascribe                                               приписывать
WORD OF LIST

reflect                                                                   отражать

spirit                                                              дух

permanent                                          постоянный

rapidly                                                  быстро

intrinsic                                                        присущий

amass                                                          собирать

hereby                                                  при сем

distinctive                                           очевидный
 LIST  OF  WORDS
intend                                                 намереваться

palatial                                                дворцовый

carry out                                             осуществлять

substitute                                            заменять

scheme                                              схема

throng                                                   трон

lavish                                                   щедрый

wing                                                    крыло

lay out                                                 располагать 

ill-fated                                               несчастливый

attempt                                                        попытка

mulberry tree                                     шелковица

dignity                                                         достоинство

suitor                                                           поклонник

eccentrisity                                                  эксцентричность

remedy                                                        лекарство
LIST  OF  WORDS
chain of fortification                           цепь укреплений

access                                                         доступ

proximity                                           близость

timber                                                          строевой лес

alteration                                                      перемена, изменение

improvement                                                улучшение

reddent of chivalry                               носитель рыцарства

non-metropolitan                                          нестоличный

austerity                                               строгость

sequence                                              последовательность

wainscot                                               обшивка

inspiration                                            вдохновение

marble                                                  мрамор

association                                            ассоциация

inherit                                                   наследовать

apogee                                                  апогей
LIST  OF  WORDS
  reorient                                             переориентировать

legitimate                                            законный

descendant                                         потомок                              

spiritual                                              духовный

inlaid                                                  инкрустированный

depict                                                   описывать, отражать

disuse                                                          неупотребление                                             subsequent                                         последовательный
 LIST  OF  WORDS
monk                                                 монах                  

consecration                                                посвящение

burial                                                 погребение

demolish                                            разрушать 

shrine                                                 храм

reerect                                                перестроить

clumsy                                               неуклюжий

fan-vaulting                                        веерный свод

predecessor                                       предшественник

buttress                                              опора

underneath                                         под

grave                                                  могила

chaplain                                             капеллан

confer                                                          присуждать        

bequeath                                            завещать    

intricate                                              сложный             

embelish                                             украшать

 effigy                                                          портрет

regalia                                                регалия

depict                                                отражать

dormitory                                           спальня
 LIST  OF  WORDS
commemoration                                 память       

occur at                                             иметь место в

vanished                                             исчезнувший

obsqurity                                           препятствие

deprive                                               лишать

abolition                                             уничтожение

reinforce                                            укреплять

conquest                                            завоевание

sovereignty                                         монархия

accordance                                        соответствие

insignia                                               знаки различия

congregation                                                община

realm                                                  власть
EXERCISES

I.    Choose the correct definition to the following:

1. take up                                         a) careful study or investigation, esp.in order to

                                                          discover nnew facts or information

2. due to sth or sb                          b)to become or make sth completely full

3. fill up                                         c)to fill or occupy an amount of space or time

4. research on                                d)caused by sth,sb; because of sth,sb.

5. carry out                                    e)to do sth,as required or specified; to fulfil sth.

                  

  Exercise II.  Make all the changes necessary to  produce  five sentences:

 

I.   /The collections/ are distributed/ and/ possessed/ by/ among/ departments/ over forty/ exhibition/ the museum/ its/ permanent/ seven/.

2. /An important/ the museum/ part/ is taken by/ collection/ among/ the numismatic/ possessions/.

3./The aquisitionn of complete/of individual works/ in the 19th/ the previous/ century/ period/  was continued/ but/ collections/ of art/ and/ on a more modest scale/ during/ than/.

4. /The Hermitage/ section/ of the very/ on the Continent/ contains/ for / pictures/ is/ which/ a special/ few/ English/ one/.

5. /Joshua Reynolds/  all/ in/ by/ is/ 1780s/ represented/ the/ canvases/ painted/ four/.
Exercise III.Fill in the blanks with the following pronouns:

in     of   
from    on    by
1. The collection has no paintings __  William Hogarth, but some __  his prints selected ___ a large and representative collection possessed __ the Museum are usually ___  show.

2. The State Hermitage __ St Petersburg ranks among the world’s most outstanding  art museums.

3. The Museum numbers among its treasures monuments __ ancient Greece and Rome and those__ the Greek settlements __ the North coast __ the Black Sea.

4. Most helpful __ the Museum’s research work is the Hermitage Library.

5. It is open to every student __ art.

6. A number __ 17th   -18th century works are __ show too.
EXERCISES

Exercise I. Choose the correct sentence:
1. a/ The Tretiakov Gallery was founded by a Russian painter - Tretiakov.

    b/The Tretiakov Gallery was founded by a Moscow merchant    and art patron - Tretiakov.

2. a/The Gallery’s centenary was widely celebrated throughout Russia in June 1956.

    b/The Gallery’s centenary was widely celebrated throughout Russia in May 1856.

3. a/The Gallery’s collection has grown considerably in the years since the Revolution.

    b/The Gallery’s collection has not grown since the Revolution.

4. a/The early Russian Art department  and the collections of sculpture and drawings were constant.

    b/The early Rassian Art department and the collections of scylpture and drawings were enlarged.

5. a/Tretiakov spent his life collecting the works of Russian painters.

    b/Tretiakov spent 10 years collecting the works of Russiann painters.
Exercise II. Read the informatuion about the Tretiakov Gallery and answer the following questions:

I.   Is the Tretiakov Gallery one of  the best-known picture galleries of the world? Why?

2.What do you know about the history of the Tretiakov Gallery?

3.Who was it founded by?

4.When and how did Tretiakov begin his collection?

5.Did he collect antique icons?

6.He was on friendly terms with many progressive, democratic Russian painters, wasn’t he?

7.Why did his collection grow rapidly?

8.What pictures do you know from the Tretiakov Gallery?

9.What do you know about the Tretiakov Gallery’s collection of «Peredvizniki»?

10.What were the first pictures of Tretiakov’s collection?
EXERCISES

Exercise I.  Choose the correct word to complete the sentence:

1. Buckingham Palace is the official /residence,home/ of the Her Majesty The Queen.

2. The Queen’s House was gradually /ruined, modernised/.

3. John Nash had rightly /predicted,promised/ that the Palace would prove too small, but this was a fault capable of remedy.

4. In 1847 the architect Edward Blore /added, took away/ the East front.

5. It /isn’t, is/ the centre of a large office complex.

6. The business of monarchy /sometimes, never/ stops.

7. Buckingham Palace became the /administrative, juriditial/ centre of the monarchy.

8. Buckingham Palace /is, was/ built for Jihn, first Duke of Buckingham, between  1702 and 1705.

9. The director of the Royal Collection is /responsible, look after/  for one of the finest collections of works of art in the world.

10. The Royal collection is a vast assemblage of works of art of all /sizes, kinds/


Exercise  II. Give Russian equivalents for the following words and expressions and use them in your own sentences:
1.potent symbols       2.carry out     3.suitor    4.predict    5.coronation
6.ill-fated    7.dignity    8.eccentricity    9.accredit    10.require
EXERCISES

Exercise  I.   True or false?
1. Windsor Castle  is the youngest royal residence.

2. The Castle covers  an area of nearly 30 acres.

3. The Castle was founded by William the Conqueror in 1080.

4. Norman castles  were built to a special plan.

5. Queen Victoria spent the smallest part of a year at Windsor.

6. St George’s Chapel  is the spiritual home of of the Prodder of the Garter,Britain’s senior Order of Chivalry.

7. Windsor is only the place of beauty without  any functions.

8. St George is the patron saint  of the Order.

9. The Valley Gardens are open only in summer.

10. The vaulted ceiling of  the Albert Memorial Chapel is decorated in gold mosaic by Antonio Salviati.
Exercise  II.   Fill in the blanks with the correct tense forms of the verbs in brackets:
    In many ways Windsor Castle ____(enjoy) its apogee in the reign of Queen Victoria. She ____ (spend) the largest portion of every year at Windsor, and in her reign it ____(enjoy) the position of principal palace of the British monarchy and the focus of the British Empire as well as nearly the whole of the royal Europe. The Castle____(visit) by heads of state from all over the world and ___(be) the scene of a series of splendid state ____ (use) for their original purpose by royal guests.
Exercise  III.

     Retell the text about St George’s Chapel  using  the following:

spiritual home; founded by; medieval style; to bury; represented by. 
EXERCISES
Exercise I.   Give Russian equivalents to the following words and expressions from

the text about Westminster Abbey and use them in sentences of your own: 
1.reerect 2. clumsy 3.grave 4. intricate 5.the domer staircase 6. Commemoration 7.

abolition 8. conquest 9.  congregation 10. an auburn wig
Exercise II. Fill in the blanks with the following prepositions:

       of    on    from    for   by

1.Westminster Abbey is one __ the most famous, historic   and widely visited  churches not only ___ Britain but ___   the whole Christian world.

2.___ 1920 the body ___ another unknown soldier was brought back ___ the battlefields to be reburied ___ the Abbey ___ 11 November.

3.The Henry YII Chapel, beyond the apse, was begun ___ 1503 as a bural place ___ Henry YII, ___ the orders ___ Henry YII, but it was Henry   YII himself  who was finally buried here, ___ an elaborate tomb.

4.At the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II ___1953 ,___ the first time    the service was televised and millions ___ her subjects could see and hear the ceremony taking place.

5.The last three coronations have demonstrated continuing respect ___ the religious significance ___ ceremony and recognition ___ the importance ___ such a public declaration ___ sovereign ___ his or her personal dedication to the service ___ the people.
Exercise III.  Answer the following questions:
1.Why is Westminster Abbey so popular not only in Britain but in the whole world?

2.When was the Lady Chapel rebuilt as the magnificent Henry YII Chapel?

3.The Nave was begun by Abbot Litlington, wasn’t it?

4.What was originally the part of the Abbey where the monks worshiped?

5.Where does the High Altar stand?

6.Who was the first poet buried in the Abbey?

7.What do you know about processes of coronation today?

8.Have coronations always followed an identical pattern?

9.Who was crowened no less than three times?

10.What was special in the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II?
WORLD’S  PAINTERS

Leonardo da Vinci                              1452-1519, an Italian painter

Manet                                       1832-1883,a French painter

Michelangelo                                      1475-1564,an Italian sculptor,painter,poet

Millet                                                 1814-1875,a French painter

Monet                                                1840-1926,a French painter

Murillo                                               1617-1682,a Spanish painter

Phidias                                               5th cent.BC,a Greek sculptor

Pissaro                                               1830-1903, a French painter

Potter                                                 1625-1654,a Dutch painter

Raphael                                              1483-1520,an Italian painter

Rembrandt                                         1606-1669,a Dutch painter

Reynolds                                           1841-1919,an English painter

Roerich                                              1874-1947,a Russian painter

Rubens                                              1577-1640,a Flemish painter

Sargent                                              1856-1925,an American painter

Scott,Gilbert                                      1811-1878,an English architect

Show, Norman                                   1831-1912,an English architect

Titan                                                  1477-1576,an Italian painter

Turner                                                1775-1881,an English landscape painter

Van Der Helst                                     1613-1676,aDutch portrait painter

Van Gogh                                          1853-1890,a Dutch painter

Vasari                                                1511-1571,an Italian painter and art historian

Velasques                                          1599-1660,a Spanish painter

Whistler                                             1834-1903,an American painter

Zurbaran                                            1598-1662,a Spanish painter

                  


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