A priest in purple vestments holding a palm branch leads a procession of parishioners among trees and boulders.

NB! · Faith · Ethnography · Humour

Parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church in Africa celebrate Palm Sunday with palm branches

Meanwhile, Palm Sunday in Africa, with real palm branches, of the kind with which Jesus Christ was greeted at Jerusalem. This, according to a report from the Exarchate, is how African parishioners of the Russian Orthodox Church celebrate the feast.

Black-and-white photograph of a crowd on Red Square with market tents and a large bunch of balloons before the Historical Museum.

NB! · Archive · Faith · Moscow · Observations · Ethnography

Palm Sunday on Red Square in 1896 and the 1910s, with market stalls and festivities

Palm Sunday celebrations on Red Square in 1896 and in the 1910s. Trading stalls were set up on Red Square, with festive revelry and Palm Sunday sleigh rides. And today?

A grey-haired man in white ermine robes and a velvet mantle embroidered with gold fleurs-de-lis stands by a winged-lion throne; a crown and sceptre rest on a cushion.

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Formal portrait of a monarch in coronation robes with fleurs-de-lis and ermine

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums

Service with fleurs-de-lis used at the banquet for the coronation of the Comte d'Artois as Charles X Bourbon, King of France, at Reims in 1824

NB! · Art · Museums

Feistune of the Eighteenth Century

NB! · Archive · Books · Observations · Nature

Futuristic Beehives from an Eighteenth-Century Book

Futuristic beehives from an eighteenth-century book. Whenever I look at pictures like these, I have the feeling that some two hundred and fifty years ago humanity took a wrong turning somewhere, and I look at pictures like these constantly

NB! · Faith · Art · Observations · Humour

Lucas Cranach the Elder and we remind you that there are 8 days left until the end of Lent, and wish everyone a sense of proportion

NB! · Observations

I Have Some Bad News for You

NB! · London · Monarchies · Observations · Mores · People

How Twenty Years Have Slipped By Since the Wedding of Charles and Camilla

NB! · Archive · Art · Science · People

Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov was also a rather good artist

Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, cosmonaut Alexei Leonov was also a rather good artist. In this photograph of 1979, Leonov is at work on his painting “The Voskhod 2 Spacecraft”

NB! · Architecture · Art · Museums

Design and contemporary art within the walls of a cultural centre housed in Milan's Palazzo Litta, where Napoleon once stayed

A pouf made of rounded rolls upholstered in cream bouclé fabric stands on a terrazzo floor in front of golden panelled doors.

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