Interviews · Museums · Heritage · Nature
Today, for the Museum Affairs series, we spoke with Nadezhda Kulakova, Director of the Griboyedov Khmelita State Museum-Reserve of History, Culture and Nature. Nadezhda Viktorovna kindly told us how Khmelita looks after its ancient trees, which were already fully grown in Griboyedov's day. - - We reported on the
NB! · Aristocracy · Heritage · Nature
Architecture · Heritage · Society
Buzuluk wooden Art Nouveau: yes, such a thing exists. The people of Tom Sawyer Fest in the town of Buzuluk are preserving unique monuments of the wooden architecture of their region, and they need our help. Read the post (https://www.instagram.com/p/CDi6i7FjI-J/?igshid=150ddi3chlg2z); perhaps you
Faith · Heritage · Ethnography
Darkened with age, brought back from the Crusades, they belong to a tradition of black female deities more than 4,000 years old in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Asia Minor. In general, no single theory exists to explain how the iconography of the dark-skinned Madonna and Child spread across Europe.
Architecture · Observations · Heritage · Society · Saint Petersburg
Quite recently I wanted to write about the creation in the Leningrad Region of a "Park Agency", which will oversee the preservation of cultural monuments, their use, and the promotion of heritage sites. Among the monuments coming under the agency's care are the Priory Park and
Architecture · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Heritage
Melnikov's best-known work is his own house on Krivoarbatsky Lane, two cylinders of unequal size, built in 1927-29 for himself and his family. Unrepeatable and striking in its simplicity, its form and its handling of light, it stands today in good condition and houses an excellent
Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Heritage
Another brainchild of Melnikov: the Gosplan Garage on Aviamotornaya Street, 1936. Originally the main floor space of the garage was given over to the departmental cars of Gosplan; from the 1950s it housed the 8th taxi depot, and since the 1990s it has been home to assorted organisations, car workshops,
Architecture · Moscow · Heritage · People · Reportage
Today marks the 130th birthday of the Russian architect Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov. In honour of the jubilarian, my team and I from the Shchusev Museum of Architecture visited the surviving Moscow monuments of his work. A sorry picture, it must be said. All of them, with the exception of the
Archaeology · Observations · Heritage · Humour
In this connection I cannot help recalling my address to an archaeological conference a couple of years ago, when I proposed borrowing the American practice of preserving rock art in situ by planting devilishly thorny plants that would bar vandals from direct access to the surface of the stone. For
Museums · Observations · Heritage
I am not at all sure about the concept of introducing to the beautiful creatures who are as yet incapable of observing elementary rules of conduct WITHOUT simultaneous titanic educational efforts to bring their behavioural pattern into order. I understand all those lovely theories that the child in its mother&
Coming Up · Architecture · Observations · Heritage · Society
How heartening that Russia has people like the team and volunteers of Tom Sawyer Fest. If you have not yet heard of this organisation, you will like it: people united by a love of the historical and cultural heritage of their native parts simply rescue decrepit, abandoned and ruined monuments.
Architecture · Faith · Heritage
The Institute of Breton Culture is opening a fundraising appeal for the restoration of the seventeenth-century organ of Nantes Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, almost entirely destroyed in the fire of 18 July. The instrument survived the years of the Revolution, but was badly damaged in the