"Von Beck - 02 -The Brothel In Rosenstrasse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

The Brothel in Rosenstrasse
Michael Moorcock





Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque crowd together: the early basilica of St Vaclar
stands
between the sixteenth-century Chemnitz fortress and the eighteenth-century
Capuchin
monastery, all noteable examples of their periods, and are joined just below, in
Konigsplatz, by the beautiful new Egyptianate concert hall designed by Charles
Rennie
Mackintosh. It has been fairly said that there are no ugly buildings in
Mirenburg, only some
which are less beautiful than others. Many travellers stop here on their way to
and from the
Bohemian spas of Karlsbad, Manenbad and Franzenbad. Mirenburg is joined to
Vienna by
water, rail and road and it is common to change here from one mode of transport
to
another, or merely to make the appropriate train connections. The station is by
Kammerer:
a Temple to Steam in the modern 'Style Liberty'. From it one may progress easily
to
Prague or Dresden, to St Petersburg or Moscow, to Wroclaw or Krakow, to Buda-
Pesht or
Vienna, and beyond to Venice and Trieste, which may also be reached by canal.
Mirenburg's wealth comes from the industry and commerce of Walden-stein, whose
capital
she is, but it is enhanced by the constant waves of visitors, who arrive at all
seasons.
The revenues from tourism are used to maintain the older structures to
perfection and it is
well-known that Prince Badehoff-Krasny, the hereditary ruler of Waldenstein,
spends a
considerable proportion of his own fortune on commissioning new buildings, as
well as
works by living painters, composers and writers. For this reason he has been
fairly called a
'present-day Lorenzo' and he is apparently quite conscious of this comparison to
the great
Florentine. Mirenburg is the quintessential representation of a Renaissance
which is at
work everywhere in modern Europe.

R.P. DOWNES, Cities which Fascinate, Kelly, London,