№ 78
Before Restoration

Bricked-Up "Bull's-Eye" Windows

Another corner of the palace, crowned with tapering pinnacles and adorned with two rows of windows: above, over three pointed-arch second-floor windows, three round "bull's-eye" windows are visible. Below, on the ground floor, are two more windows and a pointed-arch entrance, again fronted by construction-site fencing.

This frame reveals two different layers of the estate's history visible on a single wall. The round "bull's-eye" windows on the second floor are, in fact, bricked up — the light that once fell through them is now blocked by brick. The ground-floor windows below, by contrast, are not original but were cut into the wall during the Soviet era: historically, there were no such openings at this spot on the wall at all. So time has left opposite marks on this wall — closing off a window the estate's architects wanted, while opening one they never intended.

Like the previous two exhibits in this series, this is a real, already-coloured frame — the animation simply moves slowly closer to this section of the wall, allowing a better look at where restorers will need to uncover what has been bricked up, and close off what doesn't belong.

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