Archive · Books · People · Humour
This Is Very Funny. From the reminiscences of Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya about Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. I remember how we once drove up to a bridge of decidedly doubtful sturdiness. Vladimir Ilyich asked a peasant standing beside it whether a motor car could cross. The peasant shook his head and said
Archive · Faith · Education
A Remarkable Photograph, More Like a Painting. Nuns who teach at the Saint Joseph de Saint-Vallier girls' school in Quebec skate against the backdrop of the Laurentian foothills. 1967. Photo by John Lanois
Interviews · Cinema · People
Czech director Jiří Menzel (1938-2020) on censorship:. - In one of your interviews you said that cinema always faces some form of censorship. Yet it seems that in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s this apparatus gave artists a different "impulse" from the one the state or the system gives
Architecture · Observations · Heritage · Mores · Paris
Having a look inside the once much-discussed hotel right beside the Palace of Versailles, Le Grand Contrôle Château de Versailles. The hotel's unique selling point is its location literally on the palace grounds, that is, within the boundaries of the estate, behind the gates of the palace
Archive · London · Monarchies · Heritage
The oldest known photograph of London was taken in 1839. It shows the equestrian statue of Charles I near Charing Cross station This is the oldest bronze statue in London. It rises on a traffic island where Trafalgar Square meets Whitehall. The spot is officially called the “centre of London”
Observations · Heritage · Society · Paris
State negrophobia? Or perhaps chronicles of the Great Replacement? In Paris, the statue of Colbert in front of the National Assembly has been defaced. But the vandals will face no consequences. This is not the first act of vandalism against the monument to the finance minister of Louis XIV, who
Archive · Art · Pop Culture
Photograph by Albert Watson for German Vogue, 1992 Mood: Tamara de Lempicka
Listings · Moscow · Coming Up · Art · Museums
A new selection of exhibitions in Moscow. 📌 Closing soon: the exhibition “Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky” at the State Historical Museum, until 9 March 📌 Closing soon: the exhibition “Marc Chagall. The Joy of Earthly Gravity” at the Pushkin Museum, until 15 March 📌 The architect Sergey Choban’s exhibition “What We Have We
Archive · Monarchies · Saint Petersburg
Nicholas II's Half-Track Packard 3-38 of 1915. The photograph was taken in February 1917 in front of the Shuvalov Palace on Italyanskaya Street; by that time the Tsar's motor car had already been requisitioned and handed over to the Military Motor-Car School
Faith · Observations
Congratulations to all on the beginning of Great Lent, the Holy Forty Days, in memory of the forty-day fast of Jesus Christ in the wilderness. And Easter this year falls on 12 April
Architecture · Faith · Art · Heritage · People
Art must bring happiness and joy, or it is worth nothing. The Church of the Holy Trinity on the bank of the Oka, in the village of Bekhovo, was created in 1904–1906 by Vasily Polenov himself, who drew on the forms of Romanesque and Byzantine building and of the
NB! · Cinema · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour