II Be ready to give brief retelling of the text, using Appendix 1.

I Reading

a) Read the following text

Put down the unknown words (with their transcription and translation) into your vocabulary. Be ready to translate the text orally.

b) Find and write out all irregular verbs given in the text. Remember three forms of them.

The mysterious “Notre Dame” on St. Andrew’s?

In 1902, construction subcontractor Dmytro Ortov, the son of a famous Kyiv merchant, purchased the land on St. Andrew's Descent from the artist Anton Maienko. The new owner razed the one-story house with its three rooms and decid­ed to build in its place a seven-story resi­dential building in the English neo-Gothic style for commercial purposes. Ever since then, the story of called Richard's Castle became a chain of unsolved mys­teries. The fan of these mysteries is that none of the city guides of Kyiv provides information about the architect of this unique building. The famous writer Viktor Nekrasov believed that the castle was the work of the renowned architect Vladyslav Horodetskiy. However, the architect of the House of Chimeras had absolutely no connection with the castle's construction, moreover, this mystery is a rather convoluted оnе, the Konstruktor mag­azine published a design for the front of a commercial residential building planned for construction according to the design of architect and academician Robert Marfeld on Aptekarskiy Island in Petersburg. The published design of the building in Petersburg was never realized, but the front of the castle built in 1902-1904 on St. Andrew's Descent has artistic resemblance to the one published, in the magazine and there is no doubt that it was borrowed. Nevertheless, the answer to the question of who stole the design remains unknown.

Another mystery surrounding the cas­tle was about some horrifying noises and howling, which could regularly be heard in the building's chimneys and ventilation system whenever the wind blew. The mystery was in the fact that nobody had, ever been able to explain the origin of these strange sounds. One of the bone-chilling tales was settled in the castle. And only thanks to one fortunate inci­dent, this mystery was solved. The famous historian Stepan Holubev, who lived in Richard's Castle became fed up with the mournful howling and stock his hand up the chimney chute where he discovered the shell of an egg. It turned out that this was the source of the creepy howling sounds. The wind blowing down the chimney would pass through small holes in the eggshell and create a resonating sound effect. How the egg got there is another story, as it turned out, Ortov was not a very honest or fair indi­vidual, who failed to pay the construction crew in full. The insulted workers decided to get back at the tight-feted owner of the estate. Indeed, vengeance, as theft's when they cracked a dozen eggs in half, poked holes into the shells and carefully placed them inside the chimney, thus cre­ating the chilling sounds. Out of sheer fear, the castle's residents eventually abandoned the ill-fated building, thus incurring major financial losses to its landlord.

Despite this, as the saying goes, every cloud has a silver lining. Indeed, local artists became interested and eventually took a fancy to vacated House of ghosts. The Ukrainian painters Hryhoriy Dyaclchenko, Fotiy Krasytskry, and Ivan Makushenko and the famous sculptor Fedir Balavsnskiy settled in the castle. Incidentally, not vеrу many people know that Balavenskiy created precise imitations of the chimeras inside the famous Note Dame Cathedral in Paris jointly with his students and mounted them on the build­ing's exterior terraces and inside tie wind­ing stairs in the courtyard of Richard's Castle. The chimeras were in place until 1942, when the Nazis expropriated them to Germany. Needless to say, any traces of the sculptures were lost forever. It was the writer Nekrasov who labeled the unusual building The Castle of Richard the Lion-Hearted. In the 8th edition of the Noviy Mk magazine in 1967 he published an article with the heading Turbins' House, in which he first made the castle's romantic name known to the rest of the world. Despite this fact, Nekrasov himself admitted in recalling his childhood, he gave the building its name when he was still young and playing war games on its state and bridges. It's a won­derful, mysterious and unique. Until 1983, Richard's Castle was a residential building with most of its apart­ments being for communal living. Many rooms in it have preserved their glazed tile floors and molded ceilings. In any case, the residents of the unique building con­stantly suffered from the crowds of noisy visitors.

Starting from 1983, the castle once designs and goals changed several times, it again became an object of the dispute. In many attempts to build up, renovate and preserve features of the castle, the interior was completely modified. The owners' architectural masterpiece, most likely the story of the famous building on St Andrew's Descent continues.