“From the cold grandeur of the Winter Palace, Catherine [empress of Russia from 1762-1796] oversaw the expansion of her empire through wars with the Ottoman Empire and seizures of Polish land. To 19th-century revolutionary Alexander Herzen the palace perfectly symbolized the Russian state: ‘Like a ship floating on the surface, it had no real connection with the inhabitants of the ocean, beyond that of eating them.’”
(Text from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Catherine the Great," September 1998, National Geographic magazine)
