Traveling in our world, constantly changing, has long become an integral part of many people's lives. Either in reality - for business and leisure, or in the virtual world, where it is possible to be not only in another place but also in another time. In them, we are surrounded by various landscapes - natural or architectural, which we willingly or unwillingly explore.
Walking through a city like Kyiv, which has many years of history and is distinguished by a variety of architectural styles of buildings belonging to different times, is like looking at a kaleidoscope when with each turn, the pattern changes before the eyes. Therefore, the search and contemplation of buildings belonging to a particular time or artistic movement turn into an adventure, a quest in which the volume of time appears, which complements (colors) the picture of the urban landscape.
The author of the book, Ksenia Stepas, offers the reader to look at Kyiv with new eyes, using the examples of the explanation of the strange architectural term "mascaron", and also answers the question of what interested people, artists, and architects of the time when houses were built, what was considered beautiful, exciting and significant. The vast majority of Kyiv buildings to which this book is devoted were built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At that time, the Art Nouveau style dominated art and architecture with elongated proportions of facades decorated with motifs from stylized images of plants and animals, whimsical ornaments, and human faces. For example, the "House of the Disappointed Widow" on Lutheranska Street most likely got its name precisely because the mascaron on the facade has a sad expression on its face.
"Kyiv masquerades" invites us to such an adventure in the city, offers us the opportunity to use it as a guide to the "modern" style, which it is for the architects of Kyiv, allows looking around, get impressions not only in the spectrum " like" or "dislike", will allow to learn and understand something new, unusual about the city, which we have known for a long time or seen for the first time. The use of ornamental motifs with chestnut leaves was characteristic of buildings built in Kyiv, which were primarily residential buildings.
