1887 SILVER DOLLAR COIN

Since 1088 the main church of Toledo has been recognised as the primate cathedral over all others within the kingdom. It was therefore necessary for it to have a worthy see, once the direct danger of Muslim invasions had receded after the Christian victory at Navas de Tolosa in 1212. It occupies a place that appears always to have been sacred, it being on the site of the relocated main mosque, the Visigoth cathedral replacing it, possibly built on top of an earlier one.

The construction of the current building began in 1226, the archbishop being Jimenez de Rada and during the reign of Fernando III “the Saint”. The names of the earliest architects are known: Martin, responsible for the French gothic style plans and his successor, Petrus Petri. The temple base is a Latin cross, called a hall, because of being included in the rectangular plan. The elevation marks the cross, creating a vertical triangular shape since the central nave and the transept are much wider and higher than the side naves, the exterior naves being the lowest.

It is very interesting to climb one of the towers in Toledo where you can get an aerial view of the roofs of the cathedral forming a perfect cross surrounded by aerial flying buttresses marked by slender pinnacles. Only this way, or from the vantage points in the valley can the majestic nature and complexity of this outstanding building be appreciated, hidden away in a hollow in the middle of the city.

The oldest door of the temple is that of the North transept, inspired by the corresponding door of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, given the high influence that the French gothic style has on these entrances. The mullion with Virgin and Child introduces the theme of scenes from the life of Christ, sculpted on its tympanum. It is a type of catechism in stone for believers in the XIII Century. It should be read in order, starting from the lower left end, from the Assumption to the Final Judgement and the Death of the Virgin on the upper part.

Its present stone dome is from the beginning of the XVII Century, covering the Corpus Christi chapel, built on the orders of cardinal Cisneros on the recovery of the Mozarabic Rite, replaced by Catholic rites, coinciding with the Christian conquest of Toledo, 1085.

The tower, ninety metres high, was completed with a final octagonal body, finished with the slate alcuzon and three crowns designed by the master Hanequin of Brussels in the XV Century.

The main facade has three entrance doors, that of the “Pardon” or “Kings” in the centre, that of the “Palms” or “Hell” next to the tower and that of the “Scribes” or “Judgement” by the Mozarabic Chapel. There are another two, these being the aforementioned door at the North transept, called “the Fair”, “the Sandal Maker”, the “Lost Child” or the “Clock”, this installed on the orders of cardinal Lorenzana, at the end of the XVIII Century to mark canonical hours, hence it has only one hand. And, finally the Door of the Lions at the South transept, combining gothic and baroque sculptures, all of the highest quality.

Up to this point, orthodox gothic design is followed. However, Toledo Cathedral has more entrances, two that lead to the cloister, that of “the Presentation” and that of “Santa Catalina” and the last, unique because of its location in the South wall, the neo-classical “Flat Door”, the only one that does not have steps. This modest "service entrance" that gave access to stonemasons and sculptures for the temple for centuries, became a noble porch for the passing of the famous Monstrance, when the Corpus Christi procession makes its majestic departure. It is currently the entrance door for visitors. The cloister can be entered through the Mollete Door and there are another five auxiliary doors in the walls of the structures added to the temple.

The wide range of sculptures in every part have doctrinal and didactic roles, as well as artistic ones. The exterior choir shows many scenes from the Old Testament and the Large Dome from the New Testament.

The collection of paintings is also important, above all the excellent collection kept in the Sacristy that contains Christ Stripped of his Garments and the Apostolate by Greco, paintings by Caravaggio, Titian, Van Dyck, Goya, Morales, Rubens, Bassano and many more. Juan de Borgona and Lucas Giordano should also be mentioned separately, since their most outstanding paintings are the frescoes that decorate the walls of the Chapter House and the ceiling of the Sacristy respectively.

Another type of art that is very noticeable is the gold and silver work. The cathedral’s treasure is exhibited in the chapel below the tower, including the imposing Monstrance by Enrique de Arfe, composed of numerous pieces fitted together in a gothic filigree style of gold-plated silver. This is the precious case for the real Monstrance of the Sacred Way, being made of solid gold, belonging to the Catholic Monarchs. Once a year it is paraded through

Proof, if any were needed, that the Tsars were just as much into large monuments as the Soviets. The monument itself, is, course, long gone, though a helpful soul has marked where it once stood on Google Earth; on Sibirskaya street, naturally.

There's no doubt that it's old. The stone plinths on which the obelisks stand are stained and chipped, and the obelisks themselves – which appear to be clad in sheet metal of some kind – are also corroded and tattered. What looks like gold between the silver plates is actually rust. On top of the obelisks are imperial double-headed eagles, each one crowned with a circle enclosing the letter "A" in it, denoting that they were erected in the reign of one of the two Alexanders, most likely Alexander II (1856 to 1881). On the front of each obelisk is a square area which is unreadable, though they look to me like icons of some kind.

But why were they erected at all? In totalitarian states, monuments are built sometimes as a way of focussing people, that is, if you give people some grand and imposing physical monument, it gives them something they know they are supposed to line up behind and praise. In that sense, it gets everybody pointing more or less in the same direction; and what they don't talk about, at least in public, is what divides and upsets them. Whether they privately believe in the ideological myth propagated by the monument is of lesser importance than the fact that it is there, and that it is a focus for a public obedience.

The Soviets, of course, carried this to an excess undreamed of by Alexander II, with their giant statues and vast public buildings, as did the Nazis with their complex of buildings at Nuremburg, and Hitler's proposed rebuilding of Berlin; and of course, both these societies fostered leader cults of which the monuments were to some extent an expression.

SPG's title and framing suggest perhaps a dream deferred, a vision of a Siberia still unrealized more than a generation after this monument was built. One never knows in SPG's shots whether the irony is intended, or is merely a contingent product of the facts of life in Tsarist Russia. An ordinary dusty street has grown up around the fading monument, a garden or park on one side, and a bar or store of some kind on the other. A group of men on the corner register mainly as moving coloured shadows, except for two, who are lounging around, propping up the wall. SPG has angled his camera low, to give the monument what drama he can, but it's clearly a failing attempt; the hopeful future of Siberian development still hasn't happened, and the monument to it is crumbling.

This shot was relatively easy to register, but quite faded. Levels were adjusted separately for sky and the rest of the shot, and then the Auto Colour command was used selectively (monuments; telephone poles; fence; trees; and buildings) to try and get rid of various colour casts, in particular an overall magenta cast that affected everything. You can still see that the centre of the shot has too much red and purple, but it's not really possible to remove it, without radically altering the overall balance of colours.