'Visiting a Soviet-era sanatorium is like stepping back in time. Vestiges of another age linger all around - in fragments of decades-old wallpaper stubbornly clinging to walls, or colourful mosaics glorifying the Soviet worker. Soviet-era sanatoriums are among the most innovative, and sometimes most ornamental, buildings of their time - from Kyrgyzstan's Aurora, designed in the shape of a ship, to Druzhba, a Constructivist masterpiece on the Crimean Peninsula. Such buildings challenge the standard notion that architecture under communism was unsightly and drab.' Maryam Omidi, 'Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums'