Admiralty

This guide to the Admiralty in Saint Petersburg opens during the 1941 siege of Leningrad, when the building's gilded spire became a problem: a beacon that kept catching German pilots' eyes even on gray days. It follows Olga Firsova, a musician turned wartime mountaineer, and the small team sent up a rope to the needle-thin spire with gray sailcloth to deal with it. The guide also reaches back to 1704, when Peter the Great built the Admiralty as a fortified shipyard, moat and bastions and all, to launch the warships of Russia's new navy.