Aristocracy · Monarchies · Society · People
"The Russian state has this advantage over others, that it is governed directly by God Himself; otherwise it is impossible to understand how it exists"
Count Münnich
Alexandr Radayev
Observations · Society · People
Yury Solomin and his successors as Russia's Minister of Culture from 1991
Yury Solomin was Russia's Minister of Culture during the collapse of the USSR, though only very briefly: less than a month at the end of 1991. This was still the Ministry of Culture of the RSFSR. By then Solomin was already artistic director of the Maly Theatre. It
NB! · Archive · Architecture · London · Society
A vegetable garden in the moat of the Tower of London during the Second World War
A vegetable garden in the moat of the Tower of London during the Second World War. The moat was drained on the orders of the Duke of Wellington in the 1840s, to rid the city of the miasma of stagnant water; since then it had simply grown grass, on which
NB! · Art · People
Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst's Chess Set
NB! · Art · Books · Observations · Humour
I think we can all agree that dwarves cannot possibly be so much larger than hobbits as they are in this illustration
Books · Society · Paris
Edition printed in Paris by F. Buisson in 1797, Year V of the Republic
The new reckoning from the founding of the First French Republic in September 1792, illustrated from the book trade:. printed in Paris in Year V of the Republic, or in the year 1797 from the Nativity of Christ.
NB! · Archaeology · Faith · Ethnography
The Layout of the Burial Chamber and Sarcophagi of the Rulers of Ancient Egypt: The Tomb of Tutankhamun as a Case Study
Books · Moscow · Observations
Lev Rubinstein’s 2000 collection “Domashneye muzitsirovaniye” and several of its pages
Realised I had never heard or read any poems by the well-known Moscow poet and essayist Lev Rubinstein, found at home a 2000 collection of his writings, "Domestic Music-Making", with a bookmark: a 2006 Madrid metro ticket at page 43. There were no poems in the
NB! · Architecture · Observations · Paris
Versailles in the Snow
NB! · Faith · Monarchies · Society
The Bishop of Copenhagen Gives the Queen of Denmark a Light
NB! · Archive · People · Nature
This is what Hachiko looked like (1923–1935)
Art · Monarchies · Observations · Mores · Humour
It is often said what a filthy palace Versailles was in its day
It is often said what a filthy palace Versailles was in its day. There is talk of women merely hitching up their skirts to relieve themselves on the very spot where nature overtook them, and of men easing themselves straight from the balustrade in the middle of the royal chapel,