Faith · Art · Monarchies · Moscow · Heritage

Monument to Tsar Nicholas II the Martyr near Mytishchi, village of Taininskoye, Moscow Region

Monument to Tsar Nicholas II the Martyr near Mytishchi, village of Taininskoye, Moscow Region. The author is the sculptor Vyacheslav Klykov. The monument was erected in 1996, for the centenary of Nicholas II's coronation, on the ancient royal road from Moscow to the Trinity Lavra of St Sergius,

A page of an old printed book with a passage on inner anxieties, conscience and the passions.

Faith · Books · People

An old printed text on inner anxieties as the result of a guilty conscience

Archbishop Platon, court preacher to Catherine II, on the nature of anxiety:. Inward disquiet proceeds from a reproachful conscience, which feels shame and remorse when the passions are followed against the dominion of the mind. Such a wretched state of the soul is not from God, but from a depraved

Four aerial reconstructions of the site: the Circus of Caligula and Vatican Necropolis in the 1st and 2nd centuries, St Peter’s Basilica in the 4th and 21st.

Architecture · Faith · Rome

How the Vatican site changed from the Circus of Caligula to St Peter’s Basilica

The Circus of Caligula Gradually Becomes an Elegant Vatican. A marvellous infographic showing the evolution of the site on which St Peter's Basilica was built in the fourth century, and which acquired its present appearance at the end of the sixteenth century thanks to Michelangelo

Close-up of the face of Christ in a crown of thorns, with blood on the forehead and tears on the cheeks, from a Flemish oil painting.

NB! · Faith · Art

Pair of Works from Bouts's Workshop from the Duchess of Berry's Collection Sold at Sotheby's for €360,000

The delightful "Virgin at Prayer" and "Christ in Sorrow" from the workshop of Albrecht Bouts, from the recent Old Masters sale at Sotheby's in France. This pair of Flemish Renaissance works from the Venetian collection of the Duchess of Berry sold for a little

NB! · Faith · Art · Museums

The Tuscan town of Empoli is famous not only for its football club, but also for a quattrocento sculpture of Saint Sebastian by the Florentine Antonio Rossellino, regarded as one of the benchmark depictions of the nude male body of the fifteenth century

NB! · Architecture · Faith · The East · Observations

Hagia Sophia, filmed from a helicopter

Hagia Sophia, filmed from a helicopter. Just imagine how beautiful it was before the seizure

NB! · Faith · Observations

Thank God, Another Day Has Dawned

Architecture · Faith · Art · Heritage

Jan Keser and Martin Zimmermann's flying cathedral for the bicentenary of the canton of St. Gallen

The Flying Cathedral is a project by the artists Jan Keser and Martin Zimmermann, timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the Swiss canton of St Gallen. The balloon was conceived as a flying advertisement for the canton and its chief symbol, the Baroque Cathedral of St Gallen of

Faith · Art

Christ of Saint John of the Cross

Salvador Dalí, 1952

Archive · Faith · The East · Books · Observations · People

Abbot Daniel placed a lamp on the Holy Sepulchre on behalf of the whole Russian land

The remarkable Hegumen Daniel, who lived in the twelfth century, describes in his "Life and Pilgrimage of Hegumen Daniel of the Russian Land" how he petitioned King Baldwin I for leave to place a kandilo (a lamp) on the Holy Sepulchre on behalf of the who. Leave was

Archive · Faith · Books · Mores

If "pilgrim" comes from the Latin peregrinus, "foreigner, wanderer", then the Russian word palomnik comes from the Latin palma, "palm", because pilgrims carried in their hands palm branches in memory of the palm branches with which, at the gates of Jerusa

And the synonymous notion of the kaliki perekhozhie, the wandering "cripples", comes from the Greek "caligae", the name of the leather footwear in which wanderers tramped the roads. The same word gave rise to the nickname of Caligula, who as a child ran about in little

Faith · The East · Art · Books

Pyotr Vyazemsky’s poem to Alexander Ivanov on “The Appearance of Christ to the People”

I have seen the ancient Jordan. Full of holy love and fear, Into its gospel waves, The font of baptism of Christians, I plunged three times, Praying that my soul too Might be washed, graciously, by the wave Of the sores and stains of existence. Literal translation Of those thoughts,