The Mikhailovskaya Battery stands at the water's edge on the northern side of Sevastopol bay, a long, low, immensely solid work of masonry designed to close the harbour entrance to hostile ships. Its architecture is entirely functional and, for that reason, striking: tiers of vaulted casemates, embrasures opening onto the water, thick stone walls, internal corridors and the arithmetic of interlocking fields of fire. The building belongs to the great age of coastal fortification, when artillery ranges dictated where and how a naval base could be defended, and it survived the sieges that made Sevastopol a byword for siege warfare. Today the casemates house a museum, and the episode uses that double identity: architecture first, filmed in the sea light of the bay, then the collections of arms, uniforms and personal objects through which the wars fought here are told.
