Architecture · Art · Museums · Observations · Heritage · Paris

About 2,000 works from the museum will go to French and foreign museums

Today one of the finest museums of modern art, the Centre Pompidou, closes for five years of renovation. Around 2,000 works of art will be dispatched to other French and foreign museums. Part of the museum's collection can be seen quite soon, for instance, at the Grand

Archive · Architecture · Art · People

Henri Cartier-Bresson's Famous Photograph of Young People Gazing at a Ceiling Was Taken Not in the Louvre but in the Rotunda of the American Capitol in 1957

Henri Cartier-Bresson's famous photograph of young people gazing at a ceiling was taken not in the Louvre but in the Rotunda of the American Capitol in 1957. The young people are looking not merely at a ceiling but at one of the most beautiful domes in the

Archive · Architecture · Faith · Paris

Cathedral without its spire, draped in mourning for the funeral of the Duke of Orléans

The oldest photograph of Notre-Dame de Paris is a seven-centimetre daguerreotype of 1842 by Marc-Antoine Gaudin. If you have noticed, the cathedral is captured without its famous spire: it was taken down in the eighteenth century, having grown badly decrepit over six hundred years. The spire was

Architecture · Art · Moscow · Museums · Heritage · Paris

A Brief Review of the Key Publications of the Last Two Weeks of February

A brief review of the key publications of the last two weeks of February. We have spoken about new exhibitions, unique museum collections and the repatriation of art, and touched on pressing questions of the Russian art market and of architectural heritage. 📌 The Fersman Mineralogical Museum in Moscow and the

NB! · Architecture · Observations · Humour

Yet Another Day of Disapproval of Skyscrapers in Particular and of Modern Architecture in General

In a black-and-white photograph, a man in a cap follows a plough drawn by two oxen, with the columns of a ruined temple on the hill behind under a cloudy sky.

Archive · Architecture · The East · Observations · Heritage · Humour

A farmer ploughs a field with oxen beside the ruins of an ancient temple

A farmer ploughs his field beside the 1st-century Temple of Zeus at Aizanoi, Turkey, 1970. And no tourists disturb his contemplation of this magnificence

Architecture · Moscow · Heritage · Society · Saint Petersburg

The Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences (RAACS) has published the minutes of a meeting of its Academic Council devoted to the preservation of Soviet modernist buildings of the 1960s to 1980s

The Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences (RAACS) has published the minutes of a meeting of its Academic Council devoted to the preservation of Soviet modernist buildings of the 1960s to 1980s. The decision to publish the minutes was taken on 12 February, in response to the lively debate

Architecture · Faith · The East · Heritage

The Constantinopolitan Church of Hagia Sophia, now Istanbul's principal mosque of Ayasofya, which ceased to be a museum in 2020, is to undergo restoration

The roof of the church, which is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, will be dismantled. The specialists promise to employ methods and materials appropriate to the era of the Ottoman Empire. Since the ceiling of Hagia Sophia is adorned with priceless Byzantine mosaics (parts of which are covered)

Archive · Architecture · Observations · Saint Petersburg

Construction of a new archive complex on Zanevsky Prospect has been completed in Saint Petersburg

"There will be two reading rooms for working with original documents: this will solve the problem of the queue that exists today. We have created comfortable conditions for the specialists of the Restoration Laboratory," the city's mayor reported. The design, of course…

NB! · Architecture · Art · Heritage

The Lions before the Arsenal in Venice: Genuine Antique Sculptures Carried Off from Greece

Architecture · Observations · Pop Culture · Society Pages

Since we are speaking of luxurious interiors today, here is another, in Ulyana Sergeenko's new "Orient Express" boutique

Since we are speaking of luxurious interiors today, here is another, in Ulyana Sergeenko's new "Orient Express" boutique. There is a great deal of polish and lacquered surface, magnificent work with veneer, combined with generous draping in velvet and vintage lighting: Murano chandeliers and vintage Art

Architecture · Heritage · Mores · Paris

The Le Train Bleu restaurant at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, a historic monument

The popular French restaurant Le Train Bleu, at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, is officially classed as a historic monument. The refined establishment takes its name from the famous luxury passenger train that ran to the French Riviera. But at the outset it was simply a buffet, the lavish