Fresco of a group of people at a table set with goblets, a column in the foreground. At left, a vaulted corridor with painted walls and ceiling and a tiled floor.

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Fragment of an old fresco of figures at a table, with a painted gallery behind

Architecture · Faith · Heritage

The Church Shown on the 1,000-Rouble Banknote Stands in Yaroslavl

The Church of St John the Baptist in Tolchkovo is one of the most beautiful in the country and is recognised as one of the chief masterpieces of the Yaroslavl school of architecture. Richly adorned with glazed tiles and moulded brick, the Church of St John the Baptist was built

Porcelain figure of a rider in a tricorn hat and white gold-trimmed coat on a rearing white horse, with a Black servant in a turban and blue coat beside her.

NB! · Art · Monarchies

Meissen porcelain figure of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna on horseback with a servant, after a model by Kändler

Meissen porcelain figurine of the Russian Empress Elizabeth Petrovna on a rearing white horse, attended by a black servant, after a model by J. J. Kändler

Art · Education · People · Saint Petersburg · Ethnography

Fedot Sychkov's path from village icon painter to the Academy of Arts and back to the village

Paintings by Fedot Sychkov (1870-1958), Honoured Art Worker of the RSFSR and People's Artist of the Mordovian ASSR. Sychkov was born into a poor peasant family and finished the three-class zemstvo school in his village. He began to draw in an icon-painting workshop. As so

Art · Museums

Henri Matisse, Blue Nude (Memory of Biskra), 1907

František Kupka, The Yellow Scale, 1907.

NB! · Monarchies · Pop Culture · Humour

Louis-Philippe was such a mediocre ruler that he had to be reborn as a gel polish before anyone would say a good word about him

Art · Books · Observations

There are faces like sumptuous portals, Where greatness seems to dwell in every trifle

There are faces like sumptuous portals, Where greatness seems to dwell in every trifle. There are faces, the likenesses of wretched hovels, Where liver is boiled and tripe lies steeping. Others, cold and dead faces, Are shut behind bars, like a dungeon. Others are like towers in which for long

NB! · Archive · Monarchies

Four generations of the Swedish royal family: King Gustaf V, his son Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf, his grandson Gustaf Adolf and his great-grandson Carl Gustaf, born in 1946

Books · New York · Society · People

Khrushchev's Tu 114 Flight to the USA and His Calls for Peaceful Competition

On 15 September 1959 the first visit by a Soviet leader to the United States began. A Soviet sputnik in Earth orbit, a Soviet rocket on the Moon, and the Soviet leader arriving in the United States aboard a Soviet Tu-114, the largest passenger aircraft in the world. Khrushchev

NB! · Monarchies · Observations · People

Prince Harry turns 39 today, fifth in line to the British throne

Prince Harry turns 39 today, fifth in line to the British throne. One would wish him a little sense, and that the queue never, in fact, reaches him or his descendants

Silhouette of the Peter the Great monument against an orange and blue sunset sky. In the foreground are an arched bridge, barges with workers and a crane boom over the water.

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Peter the Great monument at sunset, with a bridge under construction

Dark silhouette of a sailing-ship monument against an orange and blue sunset sky; in the foreground a steel bridge span on barges and a crane hook.

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