Faith · Heritage · Society

Cages of the executed leaders of the Münster Rebellion on the tower of St Lambert’s Church

For almost 500 years now, three iron cages, each weighing two hundred kilograms, have hung from the bell tower of St Lambert's Church in Germany. In them the bodies of the executed leaders of the Münster Rebellion of 1534-1535 were put on public display. The Anabaptist uprising,

NB! · Architecture · Paris · Pop Culture

Hubert de Givenchy's Green Drawing Room

A woman in a black dress rests her head on the edge of an open chest, with a white satin dress and white shoes on the floor beside her.

Art · Observations · Mores

Painting by Frederick William Elwell, 1911, of a woman in black beside an open chest

Remembering what the wedding dress cost. Frederick William Elwell, 1911

Cinema · Monarchies · Mores

Maïwenn's film “Jeanne du Barry” with Johnny Depp as Louis XV

It has been a long time since such a handsome costume drama as Maïwenn's "Jeanne du Barry" came out. Johnny Depp plays Louis XV, and at precisely the age the actor himself is now. His influential 25-year-old favourite, however, is played by the 47-

NB! · Faith · Art · People

On his portrait of Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg as Saint Jerome, surrounded by animals, Lucas Cranach hung on the wall a Madonna and Child from his own brush

Books · Observations · Science

Beware of Things!

Beware of things! They enslave us very quickly and very firmly! So Ebenezer Sidney, the hero of Alexander Grin's novella "The Grey Motor-Car", warns his interlocutor as he reflects on the degree to which mechanical objects, or creatures, may be endowed with life. I recalled

Relief map of the Mediterranean and Black Seas with French labels, turned so that west is at the top.

Geography · Maps · Observations

The Mediterranean on Sabine Réthoré's 2011 map with west at the top

What If We Turned the Mediterranean Upside Down? Sometimes one simply has to look from the other side

NB! · Archive · Monarchies

The Bonfire That Lit the Progress of Empress Catherine the Great

NB! · Books · Observations · Humour

Discovering, to my surprise, that my own book is beyond my means

Books · Humour

Wash your hands after applauding!

Andrei Voznesensky

Archive · Books · Moscow

Peterson recalls how Tolstoy declined to read about Vereshchagin after an eyewitness account

Once Lev Nikolayevich [Tolstoy] asked me to track down everything that had been written about Vereshchagin, whom Rostopchin, in the year twelve, handed over to the people to be torn apart as a traitor. I remember that I collected a great many accounts of the event, from newspapers and elsewhere,

Archive · Books · Ethnography

King Vortigern, unable to build a tower on the hill of Dinas Emrys and wishing to offer a human sacrifice on the spot, learns from the young Ambrosius Aurelianus, who is endowed with supernatural powers, that the tower cannot be…

This legendary story recurs in one form or another, invariably linking the hill of Dinas Emrys, which really does exist in north-west Wales, with dragons and a wizard. In some legends Merlin hid his treasures in this hill. Elsewhere it is said that beneath the hill lay a burial

Alexandr Radayev