Museums · Observations · Society · Saint Petersburg
From today the Hermitage raises the price of its combined ticket, for the time being only for foreigners: it will now cost 800 roubles. I do not know how you feel about it, but I, having held a foreign passport for many years, am somewhat vexed. To put it mildly,
Museums · Mores · Humour
The Poor Man's Friend is an excellent solution for men of 1914 in straitened circumstances. A reusable condom, washable, and coiled up by means of a metal spiral at its base so that it may also serve as a female contraceptive. Thank God it is sold together with
Coming Up · Architecture · Monarchies · Moscow · Museums
The grandiose Model of the Grand Kremlin Palace, which gathered dust for 20 years in the storerooms of the Shchusev Museum of Architecture, is perhaps the most vivid testimony to Catherine II's sweeping idea of remodelling the ensemble of the Kremlin and Red Square. Alas, the plan was
Art · London · Monarchies · Museums
The best-known portrait of King Henry VIII today is a replica of a group portrait by Hans Holbein from 1537. The mural on the wall of the royal palace of Whitehall showed Henry VIII with his father Henry VII standing behind him, and, on the other side, Queen Jane
Art · Museums · Observations · Humour
This sculpture was once considered a self-portrait of Gauguin, but a growing number of experts now agree that the head was in fact made by an unknown Polynesian puppet-maker in 1894. In principle, the Getty has money to burn, so it is not all that vexing that in
Art · Monarchies · Museums · Paris · People
1960: De Gaulle at the Nicolas Poussin exhibition in the Louvre with the Minister of Culture, André Malraux. The exhibition was organised by the Poussin specialist Anthony Blunt (pictured with Elizabeth), a man of remarkable biography. Blunt was a second cousin of Elizabeth II's mother through his own
Architecture · Museums · Observations · Heritage · Paris
There is such a photograph of the outlets of the very Louis-Philippe system of central heating and, accordingly, ventilation in the Gallery of Battles at Versailles. Of course, for its time such a system was the optimal solution, but then the palace was not visited by 15,000 people
Architecture · Museums · Heritage · Society · Paris
A scandal where none was expected. For the first time in the history of Versailles, the floors have undergone such sweeping changes: in several rooms the parquet now bears a great many brass ventilation grilles. The administration explains that the old air-conditioning and heating system can no longer cope
Archaeology · Museums · Observations
A bronze mask of Oceanus from a 2nd-century AD Roman fountain, from a villa rustica in the tiny German town of Treuchtlingen-Schambach. It is kept in the Archaeological State Collection in Munich. When I see such charming things from out-of-the-way places, I feel a little
Archaeology · Museums · Nature
Excavations at Vindolanda, a Roman fort of the 1st to 5th centuries AD in Northumberland, south of Hadrian's Wall, have yielded a great many remarkable finds, such as the first known wooden toilet seat, or this witch's bonnet with its scraggly little beard. The photographs show
NB! · Art · Museums · New York
Auguste Rodin, The Hand of God, 1907. Metropolitan Museum of Art
Art · Monarchies · Museums
The portrait of Napoleon at the recently closed exhibition "Salon 1819" at the Girodet Museum in Montargis, France, is strewn with golden bees, the emblem Napoleon chose as his imperial sign. Of no small importance to Napoleon, of course, was the fact that golden bees resemble the golden