Short red jacket with silver braiding, metal buttons and fur trim on a mannequin in a museum display case.

Coming Up · Monarchies · Moscow · Museums · Education

Item from the Tsarskoye Selo Museum at the “Becoming a Romanov” exhibition in Tsaritsyno

A Hussar Officer's Mentik of the Life Guards Hussar Regiment, Made for Grand Duke Alexander Nikolayevich When He Was Two Months Old. From the collection of the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Reserve; on view at Tsaritsyno, in the exhibition "Becoming a Romanov. Upbringing and Education in the

Archive · Faith · Moscow · Mores · Society

The Council Code of 1649 forbade Russians to serve unbaptised foreigners

The Arrival of Foreigners in Moscow in the Seventeenth Century, Sergei Vasilyevich Ivanov, 1901. Until the reign of Peter, all Europeans in Russia were called, and written down as, unbaptised. And the Council Code of 1649 laid down outright a prohibition on Russians serving, or being in bondage, to unbaptised

NB! · Faith · Art · Museums

The Holy Mandylion of the seventeenth century from the Church of St Nicholas in the village of Kovda, a patrimony of the Solovetsky Monastery

The Holy Mandylion of the seventeenth century from the Church of St Nicholas in the village of Kovda, a patrimony of the Solovetsky Monastery. Collection of the Murmansk Regional Art Museum

Nicholas II on horseback holds an icon before ranks of soldiers, with an officer in a green uniform mounted nearby.

NB! · Archive · Faith · Monarchies

Nicholas II blesses soldiers of the 37th Division with an icon before their departure for the Russo-Japanese War front

Nicholas II blesses soldiers departing for the front of the Russo-Japanese War with the icon of the Saviour Not Made by Hands. Farewell to the 37th Division

Icon of the Baptism: John the Forerunner lays a hand on Christ standing in the water, with three angels on the right and God the Father and the Holy Spirit above.

Faith · Art · Museums · Observations · Saint Petersburg

Icon “The Baptism” from a Festal Tier, Second Half of the 17th Century, in the Russian Museum

Happy Epiphany! Second half of the 17th century, icon “The Baptism of Christ” from the festal tier, Russian Museum collection

NB! · Architecture · Books · Moscow · People

The writer Sergey Durylin, Pasternak's teacher, built a house on a foundation of stones from a chapel of the Moscow Kremlin, with the help of his friend the architect Shchusev, who designed Lenin's Mausoleum

The writer Sergey Durylin, Pasternak's teacher, built a house on a foundation of stones from a chapel of the Moscow Kremlin, with the help of his friend the architect Shchusev, who designed Lenin's Mausoleum. Later a mail kukuruznik (a small Soviet biplane) crashed onto this house.

Mores · Pop Culture

Russian folk tunes in Rossini’s opera “The Barber of Seville” of 1816

Ah, why was it needful to fence a kitchen garden? Ah, why was it needful to plant cabbages? With the words of this folk song, Russian troops stormed the suburb of Warsaw in 1794 under Suvorov's command. It is also said that the Russians sang it as they

Old engraving of festivities, booths and carriages on the ice of the Thames, with a title cartouche about the frost of 1683 and a lettered key below.

NB! · Archive · London · Mores · Nature

Frost fair on the frozen River Thames in London during the severe frost of 1683

Public festivities on the ice of the River Thames in London in 1683, with entertainments, refreshments and booths. Evidently the townsfolk understood that such a fair comes only once, and everyone who could attended the spectacle

Grey memorial plaque reading Rosa Luxemburg on a railing beside the canal water, with a bridge behind.

NB! · Heritage · Society · People

Memorial to Rosa Luxemburg at the Landwehr Canal in Berlin, where her body was thrown in 1919

Memorial to Rosa Luxemburg in Berlin beside the Landwehr Canal, where she was murdered on 15 January 1919 together with Karl Liebknecht. The car in which they were being taken to prison was attacked. Rosa's body was thrown into the canal over this very railing, in which the

NB! · Faith · Mores · Society

Pope Francis: Chastity Is a Virtue Not to Be Confused with Sexual Abstinence

Archive · Art · Moscow · Society

Second Moscow Conference of October 1944 on the War with Japan, the Balkans and Poland

Stalin and Churchill at the Second Moscow Conference in October 1944. Drawing by the Swiss artist Lindi. The matters at issue were the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan and the postwar fate of the Balkans and Poland. Besides Stalin, Molotov and Churchill, the conference was

NB! · In the Press · Science · People · Humour

After Omni magazine named Richard Feynman the smartest man in the world, his mother, Lucille Feynman, said: “If that is the smartest man in the world, God help us”

Latest