The often-majestic images flickering across the building's flat brick facade include rivers, cranes, buildings, bridges, ships and barges.
Located opposite the Hermitage Museum on the Moika river, the original 19th-century facade, designed by Dutch engineer Basil von Witte in 1852, has been retained, while the building behind is entirely new.
The engraver Wenceslaus Hollar depicted considerable ruins standing after the fire, including the stone facade on the river side, but only a round tower was left when Strype was writing in 1720.
The facade overlooking the river was designed as a symbol of the power and wealth of the Beauchamp earls and would have been "of minimal defensive value"; this followed a trend of 14th-century castles being more statements of power than designed exclusively for military use.
What I don't see is the pitched window of the attic, the bend that the Spree, Berlin's main river, makes behind me, the distant facade of the magnificent Bode Museum; above all I don't see the three bridges with their streams of cars and pedestrians under which pass huge barges headed in both directions.
The debacle encouraged Ammannati to return to Venice, where he collaborated with Sansovino in carving river gods and lions' heads for the facade of Sansovino's new Marciana Library on Piazza San Marco.
Thirty minutes later and less than a half mile down the sharply graded descent toward the river, I was staring at the rococo facade of the Igreja da Miseric?a, which dates to the 16th century.
Over the years, the tenants have brought up new plumbing and electrical lines, installed a new elevator and continually repaired the facades, which are exposed to river winds and weather.
Of course Keaton's character courts King's daughter (Marion Byron), but happiness must wait until he has survived raging river waters, a spectacular cyclone and a building facade toppling on him.
The west facade, which follows a bend in the river, is almost 1,100 feet long.
That romantic, populist message is reinforced by the enormous cantilevered form that projects out from the building's facade more than 175 feet toward the river.
