Revenki's photos

A disturbing discovery under the ice...

Some people can't handle their Pipe.

"Trust me, you won't feel a thing..."

"What's the frequency, Ivan?"

Another fine Dobbsco(tm) product.

Three-image composite of the view from the hotel room at the Eibsee Hotel. Hand-stitched, bitches.

The dome of the Albertinum.

The Brühlsche Terrasse (Brühl's Terrace) along the Elbe River, with the Albertinum in the foreground and the royal palace, cathedral, Augustusbrücke, and Semper Opera House in the distance.

The apex cross from the original dome, recovered from the rubble pile during reconstruction.

The inside of the inner dome.

The sanctuary of the Frauenkirche. The dark portions at the base of the altar are, like the dark walls outside, remnants of the original structure, left visible in the reconstruction.

Looking down towards the Neumarkt from the Frauenkirche's observation deck. The "one of these things is not like the others" building in the middle is the ugly communist-era building with the socialist realism mural on the side. This view shows only a few of the construction sites surrounding the Frauenkirche, where the historic center of the city is being rebuilt -- mostly duplicating the outward appearance of the original buildings on the site, and in some cases built on the original foundations.

Looking down through the oculus of the inner dome into the sanctuary. It's hard to appreciate just how big the Frauenkirche is until you see it from this particular vantage point -- those little dots seen through the oculus are people sitting in the pews. The cupola is still another ~30ft up from this point, and the apex cross another ~50-60ft.

The reconstructed Frauenkirche. The dark walls to either side and dark portions of the foundation are all that remained standing of the original church, while the dark blocks of stone in the reconstructed walls are pieces recovered intact from the rubble and placed either in their original locations or in a computer's "best guess" of a similar previous location.

Old and new -- the dark stone was one of two large sections of wall left standing after the collapse of the church following the Allied firebombing of January 13, 1945, the lighter stone is part of the reconstruction. The sections don't match up, by design: one explanation claims that the mismatch is intended to forever distinguish the old from the new, even after the new stone has weathered to the same black color, and another explanation has it that the mismatch is due to the weight of the rubble pushing on the wall and tilting it out of plumb during and in the decades following the collapse. The mismatch is visible on the interior, as well, where piers flanking the altar are shifted about three inches to one side near their midpoints.

The original location of the huge piece of debris shown in this picture.

A chunk of the original "stone bell" dome of the Frauenkirche, recovered from the ruins during reconstruction. Note the plaque showing the debris' original location.

The Fürstenzug, or "Procession of Electors", a mural memorializing the Saxon princes on the outer wall of the Jagerhof. Originally sgrafitto, it was replaced with Meissen porcelain tiles in the 1800s.