A shop hall with a stucco ceiling, chandeliers, arches, freezer cases and shoppers among shelves of goods.

Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Mores · Humour

Grocery store in the basement level of the high-rise on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment

On the whole, Pyaterochka fits rather well into the interiors of a palace of late socialism. The grocery shop on the lower ground floor of the high-rise on Kotelnicheskaya Embankment

Archive · Observations · Humour

A French Soldier Lights a Cigarette for a Macedonian Child during the First World War

A German soldier offers a cigarette to a Serbian child. What touching, unfeigned solicitude for childhood.

NB! · Architecture · Observations · Heritage

Sometimes I think that if this house is ever scrubbed clean and repainted, it will no longer be the same, and we shall not be able to love each other as before

Sometimes I think that if this house is ever scrubbed clean and repainted, it will no longer be the same, and we shall not be able to love each other as before. Please, do not show it to the municipal services for at least 15 years 🥲💔

NB! · Books · Observations

This photograph could grace the cover of Carlos Ruiz Zafón's «The Shadow of the Wind»

NB! · Observations

People Managed Perfectly Well Before, and Without Computers

Architecture · Faith · Moscow · Observations · Heritage

Swiss artists raised the Cathedral of St Gall into the air for its anniversary

I tried to imagine what it would look like if one of Russia's chief churches, St Basil's Cathedral, were made into a hot-air balloon. Swiss artists once raised one of their country's symbols into the air in just this manner: the Abbey Cathedral

Books · Observations · People

Birds born in cages think flying is an illness

Alejandro Jodorowsky photo: Robert Doisneau

Hand-coloured engraving of French drummers and horsemen entering the fortress gate of Moscow, with flames rising above the walls and towers.

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Art · Moscow · Observations

Anonymous French engraving of the French entry into Moscow in 1812

Note the appearance of Moscow's fortress walls, more reminiscent of the Western European Middle Ages, in the anonymous French engraving "The French Entering Moscow". I am especially fond of the drawbridge beside the Kremlin

NB! · Cinema · Books · Observations

Usually I choose with ease, but in the case of Miss Marple and Poirot it is impossible to say which of them is my favourite

Black-and-white photo of a man in a suit and a clergyman in vestments and mitre on a balcony with a wrought-iron railing, a photographer behind them.

Faith · Observations · Society

Patriarch Alexy II on bitter words spoken to rulers and to the people

There were times when the Patriarch's duty was to speak bitter words to the ruler's face. Now, it seems, there are coming times when still more bitter words must be spoken to the face of one's own people. Patriarch Alexy II

Black-and-white photograph of an elderly man in white papal vestments with a pectoral cross, raising his hands in greeting.

Faith · Observations · Society

Pope Benedict XVI and his view of the modern ideology of the West

We are building a dictatorship of relativism that recognises nothing as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires. Pope Benedict XVI, it turns out, on the modern ideology of the West

Art · Museums · Observations · Paris · Pop Culture

Advertisement with Poussin's painting from the Louvre and its subject of death in Arcadia

Nicolas Poussin's "The Shepherds of Arcadia" (1637–38) in an advertisement for Lolita Lempicka's men's fragrance. The first thought on seeing this dreadful advertisement: did the collaboration bring the Louvre, which houses Poussin's immortal canvas, enough money to acquire for