NB! · Monarchies · Museums · People · Nature

The horse Marengo, on which Napoleon fought at Austerlitz, Jena and Wagram

The horse Marengo, on which Napoleon fought at Austerlitz, Jena and Wagram. Napoleon fled Waterloo, leaving behind Marengo, wounded in the leg; the horse was seized and carried off to England as a trophy

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Observations

The portrait of Marie-Antoinette with her children was commissioned in 1785 from the fashionable portraitist Vigée Le Brun for 18,000 livres, a sum equivalent to more than 6 kg of 917-fineness gold, if I have not erred in my calculations

A blue silk sofa with a gilded frame beneath a portrait of a child with a dog in a green room, with bobbins lying on the sofa.

NB! · Museums · Observations · Humour

How Visitors Are Kept From Sitting on an Antique Sofa in a Museum Interior

Bobbins on the sofa so that no one sits down, and a walkie-talkie to summon security if the bobbins fail. In short, everything essential for receiving guests. And welcome, as they say :)

NB! · Monarchies · Museums · Paris · People

The Dress in Which Marie Antoinette Was Executed

NB! · Museums · Observations · Mores · Humour

I look at this little commode from the Château de Chambord and cannot see how such exhibits square with the myth that at Versailles, for instance, courtiers relieved themselves behind curtains in the corridors

I look at this little commode from the Château de Chambord and cannot see how such exhibits square with the myth that at Versailles, for instance, courtiers relieved themselves behind curtains in the corridors. The eternal story of the lift versus the lavatory

NB! · Coming Up · Museums · Observations · Palaeontology

Tomorrow at 11.00 the Ulyanovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore will present a 120-million-year-old ichthyosaur skull with four nostrils

Tomorrow at 11.00 the Ulyanovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore will present a 120-million-year-old ichthyosaur skull with four nostrils. I would happily go myself. Those of you in Ulyanovsk, do not miss your chance

Drawing room of the Château de Saché with painted drapery walls, a mirror above the fireplace, armchairs, a card table and a floral carpet.

NB! · Architecture · Books · Museums · People

Balzac's Drawing Room and Bedroom at the Château de Saché, Where He Lived for Seven Years

The modest drawing room of the small Château de Saché, where Balzac lived for seven years. His bedroom under the attic is far humbler still: a bed and a table in a cramped little room. But a fair number of the writer's personal belongings have survived here

NB! · Architecture · Art · Museums · Saint Petersburg

The walls of the White Dining Room in the Grand Palace at Peterhof are decorated only with bas-reliefs of mythological subjects: no paintings, no bronze

Museums · Saint Petersburg · Ethnography

Virtual tours section on the ethnomuseum.ru website

A virtual tour of the Russian Museum of Ethnography:. http://www.ethnomuseum.ru/virtualnye-tury

Archive · Faith · Museums · Heritage

After the Restoration the reliquary returned to Nantes, where it received little attention and was lost from view for many years, surfacing only in 1824, when it turned up in the hands of the porter of the town hall

After the Restoration the reliquary returned to Nantes, where it received little attention and was lost from view for many years, surfacing only in 1824, when it turned up in the hands of the porter of the town hall. Decades later, after long wanderings through museums and collections of jewels,

NB! · Faith · Monarchies · Museums · Heritage · Paris

The fate of the golden casket holding the heart of Anne of Brittany was a sorry one: after its desecration by vandals, the reliquary was sent to the melting pot

The fate of the golden casket holding the heart of Anne of Brittany was a sorry one: after its desecration by vandals, the reliquary was sent to the melting pot. By a miracle it ended up not as scrap gold but in the National Library in Paris

NB! · Faith · Museums · Observations · Heritage

I have a sudden longing to get to Rostov the Great and visit the Museum of Church Antiquities, where a carved altar cross of the 16th century, stolen in 1995, is once again on display

I have a sudden longing to get to Rostov the Great and visit the Museum of Church Antiquities, where a carved altar cross of the 16th century, stolen in 1995, is once again on display. Ticket: 70 roubles