Detail of a painting: a boy in red breeches and cloak, a pale doublet with a lace collar and a blue sash, reaches upward; adults stand beside him.

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Detail of a 17th-century painting: a boy in a red costume with a blue sash

NB! · Faith · Rome

Christmas at the Vatican: That's All

A spacious museum hall with a parquet floor and glass ceiling. On the left hangs a large painting of a hunter with hounds, beside a marble statue on a plinth.

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Museum gallery with paintings and sculptures under a glass ceiling

Black-and-white photo: a photographer stands by a tripod camera on a wooden platform between stone walls, with fluted columns and piles of stones below.

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Photographer with a large-format camera on scaffolding among temple columns

NB! · Geography · Nature

The Sands of the Namib Desert Meet the Waters of the South Atlantic

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Mores · Paris

Odalisque by François Boucher, 1745, the Louvre

Odalisque by François Boucher, 1745, the Louvre. This is what the mistresses of Louis XV looked like

NB!

Classic

A tall ornamented stele with a figure on top stands on a square between two apartment towers. A TexaKaBank billboard sits on the right building's roof under a cloudy sky.

NB! · Archive

Stele topped with a figure between high-rise apartment blocks, TexaKaBank sign on a roof

NB! · Almaty · Architecture

View of office buildings with arched bays in the style of ancient Otrar, on the northern side of Almaty's Republic Square

View of office buildings with arched bays in the style of ancient Otrar, on the northern side of Almaty's Republic Square. They were originally built to house ministries and government offices; in the 1990s they were given over to ordinary offices and the editorial rooms of several radio

A burned-out car sits on an empty square. Behind it, smoke rises above a multistory building with blackened windows, with a fence and an evergreen tree nearby.