NB! · Aristocracy · Architecture · London · Monarchies · Mores

During his visit to England in the 1780s, François de La Rochefoucauld could not believe that King George III lived in the modest palace of Kew, with its two tiny outbuildings, while Louis XVI had Versailles

NB! · Cinema · Observations · Humour

Everyone will remember a VGIK student like this

Vintage car interior with steering wheel, dashboard, corduroy seats and wooden armrest. The window reflects a glass roof and visitors.

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Interior of a vintage car seen through the window in a museum hall

NB! · Museums · Society · People

The Chaika in which Boris Yeltsin, First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU, was driven

The Chaika in which Boris Yeltsin, First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Committee of the CPSU, was driven. Yekaterinburg, Yeltsin Center

NB! · Faith · Humour

Step Into Paradise, There Seems to Have Been a Mistake

NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · Monarchies

The future Queen Elizabeth II with her maternal grandmother, Cecilia Bowes-Lyon, Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, in the garden of the family home, St Paul's Walden Bury, in Hertfordshire

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Pop Culture

The hall of Villa Pirondini, an eighteenth-century residence where in the summer of 1990 the Italian band CCCP recorded the album Epica Etica Etnica Pathos

The hall of Villa Pirondini, an eighteenth-century residence where in the summer of 1990 the Italian band CCCP recorded the album Epica Etica Etnica Pathos. The photograph by Luigi Ghirri was on the album cover

NB! · Observations · Humour

Perhaps Odysseus is not the best name for a boat after all?

Perhaps Odysseus is not the best name for a boat after all? At least if you are not setting out on a dreadful wandering that will last twenty years and bring you and your loved ones a sea of suffering

NB! · Art · Cinema · People

Poster for Andrei Konchalovsky's film "Sin", about the life of Michelangelo

A marble sculpture of three human heads on a white plinth. On the left, a dark painting in a gilded frame hangs on the gallery wall.

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Anna Golubkina, Prisoners, 1905: marble sculpture on display

Painted portrait of a young woman with dark hair and long pale pendants beside her face. Ochre, green and blue brushstrokes; the work hangs in a gilded frame on a dark grey wall.

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Oil portrait of a woman in a gilded frame on a museum wall

NB! · Art · Moscow · Observations · Society Pages