these incredible snaps were taken between 1909 and 1912. Photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.
I find it's often difficult to imagine history in colour, even though colours have always been the same.