Icicles are seen on a handrail along the coast at Donggang business district in Dalian, Liaoning province, China on December 27, 2018. (Photo by Reuters/China Stringer Network)

Londoners sleep on the platform and on the train tracks at Aldwych Underground station,London, during heavy all night Nazi bombing raids, October 8, 1940. (Photo by AP Photo)

Raquel Poti performs on stilts during the Amigos da Onca street Carnival party, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Saturday, February 10, 2024. (Photo by Bruna Prado/AP Photo)

“Nicholas II (Russian: Николай II, Николай Александрович Романов, tr. Nikolay II, Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov) (18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1868 – 17 July 1918) was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church. Nicholas II, his wife, his son, his four daughters, the family's medical doctor, the Tsar's valet, the Empress' lady-in-waiting and the family's cook were murdered in the same room by the Bolsheviks on the night of 16/17 July 1918”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918) with his wife. (Photo by W. & D. Downey/Getty Images). Circa 1900

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

In this photo taken Saturday, February 14, 2015, Benjamin Miller, 20, from Georgia, in the US, is gored by a bull during the “Carnaval del Toro” in Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain. An American youth is recovering in the intensive-care unit of a hospital in western Salamanca after being savagely gored during a bullfighting festival celebrating Carnival, officials said Sunday. Surgeon Enrique Crespo said he was called to operate on 20-year-old Benjamin Miller from Georgia, who had been gored and tossed by a large fighting bull on Saturday, the first day of nearby Ciudad Rodrigo's “Carnaval del Toro”. (Photo by Jose Vicente/AP Photo)

Swan Uppers try to capture a swan and it's Cygnets on the River Thames near Windsor, England, during Swan Upping, with Windsor Castle in background, Tuesday July 20, 2021. The ancient tradition of Swan Upping is the annual census to gauge the numbers and health of the swan population on the River Thames. (Photo by Steve Parsons/PA Wire via AP Photo)

Men push a motorbike through a street flooded by a river that overflowed from heavy rains caused by Hurricane Matthew in Leogane, Haiti, Wednesday, October 5, 2016. Rescue workers in Haiti struggled to reach cutoff towns and learn the full extent of the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Matthew as the storm began battering the Bahamas on Wednesday and triggered large-scale evacuations along the U.S. East Coast. (Photo by Dieu Nalio Chery/AP Photo)