Architecture · The East · Art · Heritage · Science

The bronze griffin on the apse of Pisa Cathedral, its origin and purpose

Pisa Cathedral, occupying the most conspicuous site in Pisa, is unfortunately usually eclipsed by the Leaning Tower and attracts little attention. The building is, nevertheless, extraordinarily interesting. And most interesting of all is the eleventh-century griffin atop a column on the cathedral's apse. How did it come

NB! · Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Paris

Jesus in the Parisian sky before installation on the south transept of Notre-Dame

NB! · Art · Museums · Heritage · Paris · Rome

Napoleon stole the Apollo Belvedere from the Vatican in 1797 and brought it to Paris with great pomp, installing it as the supreme trophy in the Central Museum of Arts, the future Louvre

Napoleon stole the Apollo Belvedere from the Vatican in 1797 and brought it to Paris with great pomp, installing it as the supreme trophy in the Central Museum of Arts, the future Louvre. After Napoleon's fall the statue was returned to Italy

NB! · Architecture · Moscow · Heritage

Kuskovo Palace in Winter

NB! · Architecture · Art · Heritage · Paris

Vase with chimeras in the park of Versailles, Parterre du Midi, 1665

Vase with chimeras in the park of Versailles, Parterre du Midi, 1665. During the Revolution, the imperial lilies on the coat of arms were replaced with a sword

Architecture · Observations · Heritage · Paris

Basketball court in Remilly follows the outline of the gardens of the Palace of Versailles

Versailles has given a thoroughly French look to a basketball court in the Rémilly sports complex. The new court follows the outlines of the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, while keeping every sporting dimension required. I look forward to seeing similar courts in Moscow, in place of the dull

Archaeology · Architecture · The East · Observations · Heritage · Society · Saint Petersburg

As for Vladimir Putin's speech today at the Cultural Forum in Saint Petersburg, besides his remark about transformers, I noticed the quotation to the effect that "cultural figures build bridges between peoples – this is a mission…

Let me remind you that terrorists blew up the arch, reconstructed by the French in the 1930s, in 2015. In April this year a visualisation of the Russian project for restoring the monument was presented at the Hermitage Theatre; it was developed at the Centre for Rescue Archaeology together with

NB! · Architecture · Moscow · Museums · Heritage

Traces of the bombing raids of the Great Patriotic War on the façade of the Pushkin Museum

Archaeology · Architecture · Heritage · Rome

Theatre of Marcellus in Rome, topped with an Orsini family palace in the 16th century

One of the partially surviving ancient stone theatres of Rome: begun under Julius Caesar and opened under Octavian Augustus, destroyed in 64 and surmounted in the 16th century with residential storeys, the Theatre of Marcellus was excavated and restored in the 1930s. The living quarters above the old arcades were

Architecture · Moscow · Heritage · Society

The 1909 Red Square tram line and the protests of Vasnetsov, Tsvetaev and Shekhtel

In 1909 it was decided to run a tram across Red Square. The tracks were to pass literally in front of the monument to Minin and Pozharsky, which at that time stood opposite the entrance to the Upper Trading Rows. Part of the city's public opinion came out

Archive · Art · Heritage

German photographer Herbert List created Memento 1945, a series of more than 200 images of post-war Munich, exploring the theme of death in the city

German photographer Herbert List created Memento 1945, a series of more than 200 images of post-war Munich, exploring the theme of death in the city. Among the most striking in their contrasts were the pictures of the ruins of the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, with its dead, shattered

Architecture · Observations · Heritage · Paris

Viollet-le-Duc's definition of restoration and the rebuilding of Notre-Dame

Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, faced with the difficult choice of which of Notre-Dame's historical iterations to follow in restoring it, wrote that in such circumstances it is best of all to try to imagine oneself in the place of… Yet I suspect that he imagined not only