NB! · Art · Madrid · Monarchies · Pop Culture

King Felipe VI of Spain and Queen Letizia in Official Portraits by Annie Leibovitz

Architecture · Books · Observations · Pop Culture

The Mr. Moon mouth entrance to Luna Park Melbourne, built 110 years ago

The gates of Melbourne's Luna Park, built 110 years ago: Mr Moon's maw recalls at once every urban legend and horror story about children vanishing in amusement parks. Small wonder, when you are swallowed at the very entrance by so appalling a mouth. One naturally thinks,

A figure in white papal vestments lies on a red carpet in an ornate hall with marble columns and a fireplace, gripping a staff while pinned beneath a dark rock.

NB!

Cattelan's The Ninth Hour: sculpture of a pope struck down by a meteorite

NB! · Faith · Art · People · Humour

Yet Another Cringeworthy Work by Maurizio Cattelan, Entitled La Nona Ora, Shows Pope John Paul II Felled by a Meteorite

Cinema · Pop Culture · Humour

Old Hottabych's Slippers by Bottega Veneta

Full price: 1.100 €

Aristocracy · Observations · Humour

I do love the eighteenth-century Russian language for such charming feminine forms as “baronsha”

None of your refined baronesses, mind you, but a proper, solid, genuine baronsha

Architecture · Art · Reportage · Rome

You asked for more architecture and interiors, so I went to the newest and most fashionable hotel in Rome: Palazzo Talìa, opened in 2024, whose decoration was the work of Studio Luca Guadagnino, of that very same…

Guadagnino has indeed proved a remarkable decorator. The hotel and its bar occupy a former school built in the 16th century, and nearly everything you see in the interior was made to order for this project. The carpet patterns were designed by the Hermès illustrator Nigel Peake, ceramicists from Sicily

NB! · Archive · Books · People

Jorge Luis Borges in Sicily, 1985

Art · Monarchies · Museums · Saint Petersburg

The "Sleeping Shepherd Boy" Vase, with Ornamental Details Featuring Balalaika and Sheaf Motifs, Presented to Empress Maria Alexandrovna, Wife of Alexander II, for Christmas 1858

After the painted original by Alexey Gavrilovich Venetsianov. Russia, Saint Petersburg, Imperial Porcelain Factory. Porcelain, overglaze painting, gilding; bronze, chasing. Ostankino and Kuskovo Museum-Reserve. Photo from the exhibition "The Unknown Shchukin" at the Pushkin Museum

Black-and-white photograph of a man in a hat with a briefcase and a woman in a coat running hand in hand along a street with skyscrapers behind them.

NB! · Observations · Humour

A wish for the new day with a photograph of a man and woman running hand in hand

This is you bounding into a new day, certain that today you will keep every promise you made to yourself. Don't mention it

Archive · Art · Moscow · Museums

Matisse's Watercolour Sketch for The Red Studio at the Unknown Shchukin Exhibition

Beside Matisse's "Pink Studio" at the Pushkin Museum's new exhibition "The Unknown Shchukin" hangs a watercolour sketch of the painting "The Red Studio", which he enclosed in a letter to Shchukin, counting on the collector's support. Shchukin could