Two patinated bronze figures: a cameraman with a camera on a tripod and a photographer with a camera. Behind them, a stone-clad building with an LED board showing stock indexes.

NB!

Bronze sculptures of a cameraman and a photographer outside a news agency building

Art · Moscow · Observations

For TASS's centenary, a sculptural group, "Russian Journalists", has been installed in front of its building on Tverskoy Boulevard in Moscow

The monument is the work of the sculptor Vladimir Ivanov It was in fact put up as long ago as October 2025, but I somehow failed to look about me when I walked past TASS

Moscow · Observations · Society · Humour

They Are Simply Being Moved Around*

Now the directresses of museums, now the directors of theatres. This is not culture but a fairy tale about misplaced personnel. One has the feeling that someone has spread a Monopoly board on the table and, chuckling, is shuffling the character cards from square to square. *with minor amendments The

Archive · Faith · Art · Science · Rome

Every few years, news of yet another newly discovered work by Michelangelo sweeps the world's press

Every few years, news of yet another newly discovered work by Michelangelo sweeps the world's press. Headlines shriek of sensation, specialists wince, time passes, and nobody remembers what all the fuss was about. William Wallace, the foremost living authority on the great Florentine, has calculated that since 2000

NB! · Archive · Geography · Nature

The Zhiguli Hills on the Volga in the 1880s and 1890s

Archive · Geography · Maps · Science · Nature

How the Source of the Volga at Volgoverkhovye Was Identified and Studied, from the Chronicle to Today

Photographs taken by Maxim Dmitriev in the 1900s near the source of the Volga. The officially recognised source of the Volga is a marshy area on the Valdai Hills in the Tver Region, near the village of Volgoverkhovye. It is a small spring at an altitude of about 228 metres

An elderly white-haired woman in a lilac cardigan talks on a white dial telephone beside a wooden secretaire.

NB! · London · Monarchies · Society · Humour

Soviet ATS-1 special communications telephone in the private apartments of Elizabeth II

The Soviet AToS-1 special communications set, otherwise known as the "vertushka", in the private apartments of Elizabeth II. The cryptographic information-protection equipment is, in all likelihood, built into the walnut secretaire

A round curved mirror on a pale wall distorts the reflected gallery: hanging glass elements, framed works, silhouettes of visitors and the photographer.

NB!

Concave round mirror on a gallery wall

Archive · Mores · People · Humour

At Least Come Out of the Water to Eat! Look, You've Gone Quite Blue

At least come out of the water to eat! Look, you've gone quite blue - the deafening cries of the public, to the accompaniment of which Salvador Dalí took his rest in Venice

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Moscow · Observations

I don't know about you, but to me this 1967 photograph, showing the "book" towers going up on Novy Arbat, taken from the Church of the Saviour on Spasopeskovskaya Square, is a very sad sight

I don't know about you, but to me this 1967 photograph, showing the "book" towers going up on Novy Arbat, taken from the Church of the Saviour on Spasopeskovskaya Square, is a very sad sight. They have no business being here; they ought to have been

In the Press · Museums · Observations · Society · Paris

It is hard to single out any aspect of this Louvre director's tenure that has not come in for devastating criticism

It is hard to single out any aspect of this Louvre director's tenure that has not come in for devastating criticism. Her departure can therefore rightly be called an act of responsibility, whoever may have initiated it Farewell, de Carmont - read my text on the crisis at the

NB! · Archive · Monarchies

Alexandr Radayev