A bronze mask of Oceanus from a 2nd-century AD Roman fountain, from a villa rustica in the tiny German town of Treuchtlingen-Schambach

A bronze mask of Oceanus from a 2nd-century AD Roman fountain, from a villa rustica in the tiny German town of Treuchtlingen-Schambach. It is kept in the Archaeological State Collection in Munich. When I see such charming things from out-of-the-way places, I feel a little wistful that they were carried off from the site of discovery and dispatched to a big museum, where there are dozens of similar exhibits. Treuchtlingen, meanwhile, has only 4 sights, including a castle and an old Jewish cemetery, so a small ethnographic museum, in which this mask would surely be one of the pearls of the collection, would truly be enriched by such an acquisition

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

A bronze mask of Oceanus from a 2nd-century AD Roman fountain, from a villa rustica in the tiny German town of Treuchtlingen-Schambach

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s