[ July, 2013 ] This lion is at the entrance of Livadia Palace which is famous for Yalta Conference.
The ribs are clearly visible.
This palace was completed in 1911 as a summer retreat for the tsar.
It took 17 months to build this, which is exceptionally fast in those days.
They used marbles from Carrara in Italy and many other luxuries and it was built in the way of Renaissance style, so it must have been a hard work for the builders.
This skinny lion is the workers’ modest resistance apparently.
There was hostility towards tsar already building up then.
By the way, the prince Alexei’s study is now used as a souvenir shop.
When we entered there, Svetlana, our guide said ‘ Here you can see the genuine Ukrainian hand made stuff, not made in China”.
So suddenly I got into the shopping mode.
I bought a couple of accessories, one made of amber from Ukraine and another made of unknown stones from Crimea.
