Architecture · Monarchies · Museums · Paris

The Hôtel des Invalides was built by the will of Louis XIV long before Napoleon's burial

Usually the Hôtel des Invalides, built to care for veterans of war, is associated with the name of Napoleon, who is buried there. But the Hôtel des Invalides was built by the will of King Louis XIV. This model of the Hôtel des Invalides is precisely the one that lay

Architecture · Moscow · Observations

One of my favourite buildings in Moscow: the seventeenth-century water-lifting tower at Kolomenskoye

I have always been drawn to its elegance, achieved with rather modest decoration and a simple form. The brick tower is 40 metres high. In its day it served as a gateway in the enclosure wall and supplied water to the Sovereign's Court.

Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Paris

Statue of Saint Christopher destroyed, cathedral made Temple of Reason in the French Revolution

The Statue of Saint Christopher in Notre-Dame. The colossal statue of Saint Christopher, dated to 1433 and standing opposite the pillar by the west entrance of the Cathedral, was destroyed during the French Revolution. The Cathedral was turned into a "Temple of Reason". Inside it they set

Architecture · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations

A Masterly Exhibition of Francisco Infante Opens at the New Tretyakov

A masterly exhibition of Francisco Infante has opened at the New Tretyakov. "Metaphors of Infinity" is a colossal retrospective of Infante's entire oeuvre, from the earliest works to the newest series. What strikes one first is the extraordinary architecture: no walls at all, every work hovers

Architecture · Faith · Cinema · Moscow · Heritage · Education

School No. 36 in the Zachatievsky Convent on Ostozhenka: built in 1936, demolished after closing in 2002

A Grave Beside the School Walls? It was an interesting spot in Moscow, and surely some of my subscribers remember the building of School No. 36, which operated until 2002 inside the Conception Convent on Ostozhenka. The school building went up in 1936 on the site of a demolished church,

Architecture · Faith · Art

Mosaic of the Baptism of Christ in the Arian Baptistery in Ravenna, 6th century

To the right of Christ is depicted the personification of the River Jordan

NB! · Archive · Architecture

The Sagrada Família in 1920

Architecture · Faith · Observations · Humour

Completion of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is expected in 2026

It is reported that the construction of the La Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona is expected to be completed in 2026. Just in time for the centenary of the death of its legendary architect, Antoni Gaudí. That is to say, in 2026 the longest-running building project in the world

NB! · Architecture

A spiral staircase in Genoa by the architect Robaldo Morozzo della Rocca, twentieth century

NB! · Architecture · Faith · The East · Art

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in a nineteenth-century painting and in a twenty-first-century photograph

Architecture · Society · Saint Petersburg · Humour

Just in Time!

Just in time! A triumphal column is to be erected in Saint Petersburg in memory of Russia's victory in the Great Northern War of 1700-21. The idea of a triumphal column is more than three hundred years old: the first design was drawn up under Peter himself,

Architecture · Science

Deliberate curvature of lines in the architecture of the Parthenon and other Greek temples

It turns out that the finest examples of classical Greek architecture, the Parthenon, the Hephaisteion, the Temple of Apollo at Corinth and the Temple of Zeus, are marked by a deliberate absence of perfectly straight lines. It is precisely the calculated curvature of the straight and the inclination of the