Books · Monarchies · People · Saint Petersburg

Historian Adrien Richer on the deaths of Tsarevich Peter Petrovich and Tsarevich Alexey

In April 1719 Peter I's second son, Tsarevich Peter Petrovich, dies at the age of three and a half. The French historian Adrien Richer, in his History of … the Russians, published in 1770, suggests that Peter “felt that the priests and adherents of the old faith would not

Moscow · Observations · Paris · Pop Culture · Nature

Tree topping in 1960s Paris in a photo of Audrey Hepburn and in Moscow

Bonsoir. Thanks to this photograph of Audrey Hepburn we know that in the Paris of the 1960s, too, there was the ruinous practice of crown-topping trees, which is now applied everywhere in Moscow and within a couple of years destroys healthy, sturdy trees. But note that there, at least,

Archive · Monarchies · Observations

Rumyantsev's Embassy to Sweden in 1720 and Agreement on Peace Talks in Åbo

Since they write that the Northern War was recalled at today's negotiations, I too shall turn to the events that preceded the conclusion of the Peace of Nystad. So. The embassy to Sweden in September 1720, ostensibly to congratulate Frederick I on his recent coronation, was headed neither

Monarchies · Heritage · Mores · Humour

Bust of Peter the Great in Brussels and the legend of the Tsar's 1717 visit to the fountain

Does the bust of Peter the First in Brussels stand on the spot where the Tsar was sick after a drinking bout in April 1717? The bust is said to have been accompanied by a Latin inscription: "On 16 April 1717, at 3 o'clock in the afternoon,

Aristocracy · Monarchies · Heritage · Society

A legal dispute of almost a century over ownership of the property of the Hohenzollern royal dynasty has come to an end: the German federal government, together with the states of Berlin and Brandenburg, has reached an agreement with the descendants of th

The dispute began in 1926, when a treaty on the division of property after the fall of the monarchy in 1918 was signed between representatives of the House and the former state of Prussia. However, since the Hohenzollern property had been confiscated before the agreement was concluded, the legal questions

NB! · Archaeology · Archive · Faith · The East

Graffiti of a ship from the Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Constantinople

NB! · Geography · Maps

An Arctic-centred map, a most interesting view of this part of the world

A man in a hat and face mask stands by a marble wall as a large dark bird spreads its wings before him and pigeons fly nearby.

NB! · Art

The photograph “Black Archangel” by Vlad Nekrasov, taken in Novosibirsk in 2022

The Black Archangel. Vlad Nekrasov. Novosibirsk, 2022

Archive · Monarchies

In the instruction issued by His Imperial Majesty to Alexander Rumyantsev by the College of Foreign Affairs before his departure for the Swedish embassy, there is an important clause on the conclusion of an armistice, that is, peace with Sweden

In the seventh clause Peter orders Rumyantsev to tell Frederick plainly of the reports known to him that the Swedish side wants a peace agreement, and to ask whether this is truly so, informing him that Peter has no need of a peace agreement, but that if Sweden wants one,

Archive · Monarchies · Humour

Rumyantsev's letter to Peter I on the Swedish fleet alarmed by an embassy galley in 1720

The Swedes were so frightened of the Russian fleet that even a single Russian post galley threw their coastal forces into confusion. Adjutant General Alexander Ivanovich Rumyantsev describes in a private letter to Peter I an amusing incident that befell him in Sweden in August 1720, when Peter sent him

Geography · Monarchies · Society

Victory of the Russian galley fleet under Golitsyn at Grengam in 1720

By 1720 Sweden, once the formidable Lion of the North, realises the futility of its ambitions to dominate the north of Europe; its former grandeur has been squandered in a string of defeats at the hands of Russia. England, which had stood on Sweden's side from the very

Archive · Art · Moscow · Museums

Zotov Centre opens exhibition on the October and ROPF photography groups

Moscow collections hold a great many works by Constructivist photographers, but the systematic study and display of this legacy began only comparatively recently. Well, better late than never. An exhibition devoted to the work of members of two photographic associations, October and ROPF, has opened at the Zotov Centre. Both

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