Architecture · Observations · Heritage
The appalling "restoration" of one of the oldest dwellings in France. During the pandemic, the owners of the world-famous House of Jeanne in the small town of Séverac-le-Château in the south of France carried out repairs. After the house, a contemporary of the Crusades, became
NB! · Observations
NB!
NB!
NB! · Art · Museums · Observations · Paris
Mood for the week: a porcelain Bolognese of the Meissen Manufactory, 1734. Modelled by Johann Joachim Kändler, collection of the Louvre, donor a former consul of the Ottoman Empire in France, Isaac de Camondo
NB! · Archaeology · Art · Museums
Roman gold ring for three fingers. 3rd century AD.
NB! · Observations · Humour
Aristocracy · London · Monarchies
Among the guests at Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897 were Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and his wife, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. It was the first celebration of the Diamond Jubilee of a monarch's reign in English history. The second Diamond
Art · Monarchies · Mores · Paris
People had danced in masks as early as the Renaissance, but the first masked ball as we know it appeared only at the court of the young Louis XIV, and it was held in the Louvre. The people in the centre of the hall hold hands and perform the old
NB! · Art · Humour
A View of the Acropolis. Caricature by Boris Efimov, 1962
Architecture · Geography · Heritage · Rome
In the 1940s the Rome Metro was laid in close proximity to historic monuments. Line B passes a few metres from the Colosseum. Did anyone worry about possible damage to the ancient buildings? Mussolini, at any rate, was untroubled: he proclaimed a policy of the most direct route, that is,
Art · Society
The Stolen Cupid, 2015. By the contemporary Italian artist Daniele Accossato. Accossato reimagines the fate of classical works of art, portraying them stolen, wrapped up, deprived of liberty and ready for dispatch. It is an allegory of the workings of the modern art world, which commercialises works of art and