Old photograph of a library: ornate cast-iron galleries lined with books on several levels, a spiral staircase, women standing on the balconies and readers seated behind a balustrade below.

NB!

Library hall with tiered iron book stacks and spiral staircases, black-and-white photograph

Architecture · Books · Heritage

Cincinnati's Public Library of 1874 was demolished in 1955 and replaced by a parking structure

The Main Public Library of Cincinnati was once considered the most beautiful library in America. Behind an unremarkable façade lay a modest building with an interior of extraordinary workmanship by the architect McLaughlin. The heart of the library was a four-storey atrium with five levels of cast-iron book

Aristocracy · Archive · Monarchies

The Christening of Prince Pavlos of Greece, 1967

The christening of Prince Pavlos of Greece, 1967. How beautiful the Queen Dowager Frederica is; one sees at once whom her daughters take after! Queen Anne-Marie of the Hellenes holds her month-old son Pavlos in her arms. Princess Sophia, who left Athens after her wedding to the Spanish

Archive · Faith · Science · People

Georges Lemaître, Belgian priest, astronomer and author of the expanding universe theory

Father Georges Lemaître explains the Big Bang theory to Pope Pius XII. The Belgian priest Georges Lemaître was an astronomer and mathematician, a doctor of sciences, a professor of astrophysics, who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became the author of the theory of the expanding Universe and made

Archaeology · Architecture · Rome

The Ancient History of Cities Lives On in Their Layout

The ancient history of cities lives on in their layout. One of the most beautiful squares in Rome, Piazza Navona, owes its rounded northern end to the fact that in 46 BC Julius Caesar built a stadium here, which the Emperor Domitian later considerably enlarged, giving it the shape of

Architecture · Cinema · Observations · Heritage

The drawbridge of Langeais under Louis XI and Jacques Siegfried's restoration of the château

My favourite part of any castle is the drawbridge. Unfortunately, the cinema pays this feature attention only in siege scenes; after that, the focus falls wholly on walls and arrow slits. And for the most part the bridges shown are monotonous and dull. Here is an example of an interesting

Books · Moscow · Education

Aksakov studied at university for two years, Stankevich for four because of a cholera epidemic

Sergey Aksakov studied at university for two years and received a certificate. Nikolay Stankevich, by contrast, studied for four, having had to sit the same course twice on account of a cholera epidemic.

Architecture · Faith · Observations · Heritage · Society

The Bordeaux church turned into a garage and other new uses of churches in Europe

I watch with interest as my French colleagues argue over a church in Bordeaux that has been turned into a garage. The arguments touch on the sacredness of religious buildings, on the preservation of heritage and memory, and on respect for the labour of architects and artists. In short, it

Black-and-white photo: cars and vans stand in the dark nave of a Gothic church with stained-glass windows and scaffolding.

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Faith · Heritage

Cars parked inside a Gothic church with scaffolding

NB! · Architecture · Faith · Heritage

A motor garage in the building of the ancient Bordeaux church of Saint-Jacques

NB! · Faith · Observations · Reportage · Rome

To join the queue for Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican, you must first pass beneath the colonnade and through a body-temperature checkpoint

NB! · Moscow · Observations · Mores

A most fascinating discussion on whether the cook Lucien Olivier, creator of the famous salad, really existed, whether his name was Nikolai, whether the salad was invented long before his birth, and who lies beneath a gravestone bearing that name in a Ger

Alexandr Radayev