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Nikolskaya Street in Moscow from its renaming to pedestrianisation in 2013

The Historical and Archival Institute. A photograph from the late 1990s: 25 October Street has only recently become Nikolskaya Street again, but has not yet become the pedestrian one we know today 1995: not yet 2000: still no 2005: no, not yet 2010: not for the moment 2013: hurrah! Nikolskaya

Architecture · Faith · Observations · Heritage

Plastic windows installed in the Church of Cosmas and Damian in Kaluga, built in 1794

Plastic windows have been installed in the church of Cosmas and Damian in Kaluga, built in 1794. A very beautiful church in a very lamentable state now conforms perfectly to the spirit of the age and offers a picturesque example of our attitude to a heritage that has not yet

Architecture · Moscow · Heritage · Society Pages · Humour

Three stages of one cake: scroll through the photos from the latest to the earliest and you get, quite literally, the restoration chronology of the federally protected heritage site in whose shape the cake was made

In the year of its centenary, the Library of Foreign Literature has at last opened the restored late eighteenth-century house at Nikoloyamskaya, 6. The whole official upper crust of culture turned out for the occasion: the minister, deputies, heads of federal agencies, directors of institutions. Even Vladimir Medinsky sent

Architecture · Moscow · Humour

The decor of the house of Hugo Eberling, owner of a joint-stock concrete-works company, in Basmanny Lane be like:

you just open random pages of books on heraldry and semiotics: "oh, that's pretty, let's have it on the façade", "oh, an eagle. Stick that on too", "a mascaron? Is that some sort of dessert?", "Masonic boots? We'

Architecture · Art · Observations · Ethnography

Blacksmith Kirillov’s House in the Village of Kunara, Sverdlovsk Region, Built in 1954–1967

What does the country property of one's dreams look like? Here, for example, is the house of the blacksmith Kirillov in the village of Kunara in the Sverdlovsk Region, built in 1954-67 by a simple Russian man for himself and his family and decorated by his own

Black-and-white photograph of a two-storey building with a pediment on a snowy square, with two passers-by near the fence.

Archive · Architecture · Moscow · Heritage

Yury Pankratov on the demolition of the historic Sobachya Ploshchadka buildings during the construction of Kalinin Avenue in the 1960s

Sweeping away the mouldy vulgarity of Houses that huddle hunchbacked, Work proceeds at full throttle In the district of the Arbat... Yury Pankratov on the demolition of the old buildings of the historic Sobachya Ploshchadka complex in the 1960s, when Kalinin Avenue, now Novy Arbat, was driven through

Ochre house facade with green shutters and a marble plaque recording Napoleon's birth on 15 August 1769, seen from below.

NB! · Architecture · Museums · People

Facade of the house in Ajaccio, Corsica, where Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769

The house in which Napoleon was born on 15 August 1769. Ajaccio, Corsica

A twelve-metre aluminium sculpture of stacked, irregular lumps on a square, with a mobile crane and a lift beside it.

NB! · Architecture · Art · Moscow · Observations

Urs Fischer’s sculpture “Big Clay” installed at the GES-2 building on Bolotnaya Embankment

Beside the VAC Foundation for contemporary art, that is, by the GES-2 building on Bolotnaya Embankment, the installation of a work by Urs Fischer has been completed. It looks striking. We shall see how long this 12-metre aluminium surprise remains standing, and yes, I am aware that the

Architecture · Faith · Observations · Mores

A Moscow family bought a 1908 log house in Tarusa and opened a café in the yard

A touching piece about how a young family left Moscow, buying in Tarusa an izba of 1908 that was once a dependency of the Holy Trinity Convent community. The house was sold by the elderly granddaughters of its first owner, who chose these buyers precisely because they were the only

NB! · Architecture · Observations · Humour

A fine example of repair work by an Italian contractor in a dining hall of the late Renaissance, not far from the castle at Racconigi

Architecture · Monarchies · Observations · Paris · Humour

Azure standard in Napoleon's dressing room at Rambouillet resembles the flag of Kazakhstan

I recalled Napoleon's lavatory in the Château de Rambouillet, which he rebuilt for his own needs and restored after the ravages of the Revolution. Today the palace is used for the highest affairs of state. The interiors are beautiful. And in the lavatory, with its medallion by Jean

Concrete frame and steel beams of a building under construction, part of the facade covered by green netting, with a blue fence in the foreground.

NB! · Architecture · Moscow · Museums · Observations

Construction of the New Tretyakov Gallery Building as Seen by the Author

The new Tretyakov Gallery building. I trust history will not remember it