Architecture · Faith · Observations · Heritage
Palekh has a remarkable Church of the Exaltation of the Cross with an interesting tent-roofed bell tower. The people of Palekh built it all together, from 1762 to 1774. In Saint Petersburg at that time Rastrelli was giving way to Vallin de la Mothe, while in the Vladimir lands
The Golden Age · Cinema · Heritage · Science · Society
The American company Fable, founded by the producer Edward Saatchi, is using generative artificial intelligence to restore the lost 43 minutes of Orson Welles's film «The Magnificent Ambersons». Edward Saatchi belongs to the family that founded the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. His company has received investment from
The East · Art · Museums · Heritage · Society
On 24 September Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan, wife of the Chinese President Xi Jinping, visited the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Asian Art in Washington. The First Ladies came to the museum during the diplomatic visit of the Chinese delegation, while their husbands remained at the White
Faith · Architecture · The East · Heritage
Restoration of a tenth-century church has been completed in the Georgian village of Didi Kldeisi in Tetritskaro Municipality. Tetritskaro Municipality lies in the Kvemo Kartli region in the south of Georgia. After its restoration, the church was consecrated in honour of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of
Art · Museums · Heritage · Society
The British government has temporarily barred the export from the country of the bronze statuette "Seated Nymph" by the Italian sculptor Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, whom his contemporaries nicknamed Antico. Experts have valued the statuette at £4.6 million. The temporary bar gives British museums and galleries time
Art · Archive · Museums · Heritage
The Bavarian State Painting Collections have returned to the heirs of Sophie Heilbronner, née Wimpfheimer, the painting "Music (Arcadian Scene)" by the German artist Albert Lang, painted in 1892. The Bavarian State Painting Collections bring together the museums of Munich, among them the Alte and Neue Pinakothek. The
Archaeology · Museums · Heritage · New York
The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has handed over to Greece ancient objects that until recently were held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Since 2017 the Manhattan prosecutor's office has had a special unit devoted to combating the illicit trade in antiquities, which
Observations · Heritage · Society · Paris
Corporal punishment (I am not speaking of running the gauntlet, branding and the knout, but in the form of the bastinado at the very least) must surely be restored. Precisely for such occasions, when the early bird has started to sing, lest the cat should eat it
The East · Archaeology · Archive · Heritage
Archaeologists working at Hattusa, the capital of the Hittite kingdom on the territory of present-day Turkey, have found a fragment of a clay tablet bearing cuneiform writing, which has turned out to be part of the Treaty of Kadesh. Cuneiform is a system of writing in which signs were
Saint Petersburg · Heritage · Architecture · Museums · Archive
The Catherine Palace suffered severely during the German occupation of Pushkin. The Germans first plundered Rastrelli's Baroque masterpiece, then turned it into barracks and garages, and, retreating in January 1944, mined it and set it on fire. It was from its charred and mutilated walls that the Amber
Architecture · Moscow · Faith · Heritage · Society
The bell tower of the Strastnoy Monastery, demolished in 1937, was used in the Soviet years for anti-religious propaganda and for advertising Communist ideas: the monastery had been closed since 1919 and housed the Central Anti-Religious Museum. The monastery's first gate church was built by order
Museums · Society · Paris · Heritage
On Saturday the Paris police arrested two dimwits from Germany at the Louvre, who had fixed two paintings of their own, each measuring 30 by 40 cm, to the wall beside the "Mona Lisa". One of the pictures they had brought depicted a man in armour. The other