Architecture · Moscow · Museums · Heritage
Restoration of the Egyptian Pavilion at the Ostankino Estate completed. Specialists have restored more than 700 sq. m. of authentic artistic parquet, door leaves adorned with gilded and silvered carving, faux marble, items of fittings and stucco decoration, as well as the historic stoves with their sculpted sphinxes. The design
Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Paris
The restored bells of Notre-Dame de Paris have a good many unusual and interesting details attached to them. The great bell Emmanuel, for instance, is a witness to history: cast in 1681, it is the only one of the large bells to have survived the French Revolution. Napoleon heard
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Architecture · Faith · The East · Art · Monarchies · People
The beautiful frescoes of Mikhail Nesterov in the Church of Alexander Nevsky at Abastumani in Georgia. This is a unique case: the entire interior of the church was painted in fresco by Nesterov himself, without the help of other artists: 56 compositions in 8 years. Nesterov's biography in
Architecture · Observations · New York · Society · Humour
Trump has berated the UN for pocketing several billion on renovating the very building that houses its Secretariat. One has the feeling that the embezzlement of repair funds is the most elementary corruption practice in the world, running from the endless levies at school for redecorating a classroom to, as
Architecture · Heritage · Mores
A protected zone has been established around the Mamontov dacha in the Moscow Region. The Mamontovs were the first builders of dachas along the Yaroslavl line. At the turn of the 1850s and 1860s, Mikhail Nikolayevich Mamontov built a two-storey dacha on a plot of leased land in the
Architecture · Heritage · People · Pop Culture
Jeremy Irons lives in a restored 15th-century Irish castle. In 1998 the actor bought the ruined Kilcoe Castle in County Cork; its restoration took six years and about 2 million dollars. Irons's castle was built in 1458, but from 1603 onwards it lay in a state of
Architecture · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations
I did not know that Moscow had a little neighbourhood where, from the 1930s onwards, outstanding Soviet artists lived and worked side by side. Igor Grabar, Boris Ioganson, Geliy Korzhev, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Tyshler, Semyon Chuikov: the names of these luminaries are familiar to everyone, but one need only imagine
Archaeology · Architecture · Museums · Palaeontology · Ethnography
An Ancient Egyptian Temple in the Middle of Siberia. What? Yes The Krasnoyarsk Museum of Local Lore is one of the oldest museums in Siberia and the Far East and one of the largest in Russia. Its building, designed in the Egyptian style, was the work of the distinguished Krasnoyarsk
NB! · Archaeology · Architecture · Heritage
Beneath an H&M in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, lie the remains of an ancient Roman stadium, open to all who care to look. Entirely free of charge: one need only descend to the menswear department