Archaeology · Architecture · Heritage

About 200 Iron Age tombs found during restoration of a building in Trento, Italy

In Trento, Italy, a large Iron Age burial ground with some 200 tombs has been found during the restoration of a historic building. The burials survived thanks to ancient floods, which "sealed" the site for 2,500 years. The tombs contained cremated remains, as well as objects such

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Moscow · Heritage

"The Book House", or the Comecon Building on Novy Arbat, Declared Unfit for Use and Due for Demolition, in Soviet Print

Archaeology · Architecture · The East · Geography · Science

The Area of Babylon According to Herodotus and to Modern Researchers

Herodotus describes Babylon as a square city with sides of 120 stadia. One stadium is about 175 metres, so the area of Babylon, according to Herodotus, was 441 square kilometres, the size of 4 modern Parises or half of New York. Quite an enormous city to have in the desert.

Architecture · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Science · Paris

The Paris Gallery of Mineralogy and Geology compared with the Fersman Museum

Yes, my favourite museum in Moscow is still the Fersman Mineralogical Museum in Neskuchny Garden. Let us compare it with the Galerie de Minéralogie et de Géologie in the Jardin des plantes in Paris, which occupies a building of somewhat grander proportions, yet looks almost like the Fersman Museum. The

Architecture · Faith · Art · Museums · Society · Paris

Digest of channel posts from the first two weeks of February on Paris, culture and history

A guide to the posts published on the channel in the first two weeks of February. Besides a great many posts about Paris, there was cultural news, surveys of social problems and astonishing stories from the past. 📌 The story of Saint Plautilla, who handed her veil to the Apostle Paul

Black-and-white photograph of a man and a woman standing at a window of a richly carved, ornamented façade.

Architecture · Cinema · Observations

The film “A Room with a View” and a photograph of a couple at the window of an ornate façade

Two at a Window of the Doge's Palace in Venice. It put me in mind of the film A Room with a View. If you have not seen it, it is essential viewing, a jewel in the golden fund of world cinema.

NB! · Architecture · Art · Paris

Niko Pirosmani in the courtyard of Dover Street Market, which has settled in the Marais, in the Hôtel de Coulanges, where Madame de Sévigné once lived

Architecture · Art · Moscow · Museums

Yury Avvakumov created a model mausoleum of dominoes with Swarovski crystals in 2008

A mausoleum of black dominoes with Swarovski crystals. An homage to Shchusev. Yury Avvakumov, 2008. The domino, a byword for the chain reaction, for unstable, successive collapse, becomes the material of an object emblematic of both a political system and modern history. On the other hand, it is a tomb

Architecture · Observations · Science

In the French spa town of Rive-de-Gier, a glass pipeline appeared as early as the middle of the 19th century

I am not sure that such sewerage systems are in use today, but glass pipelines are employed in industrial production

Architecture · Monarchies · Paris · People

The Louvre's east façade colonnade by Claude Perrault, elder brother of the storyteller

And from our window the Place du Louvre is in view. A view of the colonnade of the east façade of the Louvre, a true masterpiece of French classicism. But we do not peep out of every secret little window of the royal palaces for nothing. Another name for this

NB! · Architecture · Observations · Paris

Spiral Staircases of Paris Are a Love Affair of Their Own

Architecture · Faith · Observations · People

British architect Quinlan Terry on modernism and the divine origin of the architectural orders

I don't think we can ignore modernism. But, in general, I wouldn't mind if it had never existed. I think the world would have been a far better place. So says the British architect Quinlan Terry, one of the present-day apologists for classical architecture. Another