Evening view of a lit walkway above the water along an embankment, with an arched bridge and yellow buildings beyond.

NB! · Architecture · Moscow · Observations

Pedestrian bridge along Bolotnaya Embankment in Moscow completed in time for City Day

The bridge along Bolotnaya Embankment, whose construction we have followed since the spring, is at last ready. Remember, I wrote that they would probably want to open it for City Day? They made it just in time

Archaeology · Museums · Observations · Heritage

Treasure of the 13th century BC found near Alicante in 1963 stolen from the MUVI museum

The Villena Treasure, one of the greatest Bronze Age hoards, stolen in Spain. Fifty-nine objects, ten kilograms of gold and almost seven hundred grams of silver, which lay in the bed of a dried-up river near Alicante from the thirteenth century BC until December 1963, when the archaeologist

NB! · Architecture · Moscow · Museums · Observations

Just think: the Polytechnic Museum has been closed since 2013, so one might say an entire generation of visitors has been denied the chance to set foot in this unique building

Just think: the Polytechnic Museum has been closed since 2013, so one might say an entire generation of visitors has been denied the chance to set foot in this unique building. Does anyone have any notion of when the museum will reopen in its native home, or, more precisely, whether

Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Heritage · Society

The US Department of Justice has announced that if repairs and funding for the Kennedy Center are suspended, the building will have to be demolished

The collision arises from a lawsuit brought by the Democrat Joyce Beatty against the attachment of Trump's name to the building. In May 2026 a court had already ordered that name removed from the title "Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing

NB! · Moscow · Observations · Science · Humour

The Achievements of Elon Musk Fly Over Yury Gagarin Square

Observations · Mores · Humour

How right he is!

I no longer know what words to use to explain to my acquaintances, and mostly to people I barely know, that I would rather not embrace and kiss in place of an ordinary greeting; each time it is an awkward situation

Art · Museums · Observations · Humour

“Smell” by Jan Miense Molenaer, from his series on the five senses, 1637

"Smell", Jan Miense Molenaer, 1637. Collection of the Mauritshuis I do, of course, understand that with his series of the five senses the Dutch master, with his characteristic humour and earthy realism, invites us to forget about lofty allegories and maidens with bouquets of flowers, but even so,

Art · Observations · Heritage · Ethnography

I have read two items in the official information bulletin of the Haida people, who live on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii in British Columbia, Canada, devoted to the return of totem poles

One article tells how the village of Sgaang Gwaay Llnagaay, which was emptied in the 1880s by epidemics, still has more than thirty ceremonial poles with figures of bears and killer whales, carved from cedar in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The poles marked families and served as memorials to

NB! · Observations · Society · Humour

Should we worry that tension between France and Italy is rising as sharply as during the Second World War, given both countries' highly dubious military achievements in those years?

Geography · Monarchies · Observations · Society

A reminder that, purely hypothetically, had Catherine II's plans for "armed neutrality" and war against Great Britain been realised, Russia could have bought or leased the Faroe Islands from Denmark, then an ally, to…

A reminder that, purely hypothetically, had Catherine II's plans for "armed neutrality" and war against Great Britain been realised, Russia could have bought or leased the Faroe Islands from Denmark, then an ally, as a year-round base for the Russian fleet. What prevented it was

Archaeology · Observations · Science · Humour

Bones from the Penghu Strait seabed attributed to Denisovans up to 190 cm tall

Call Drobyshevsky! Just joking, he has known all this for ages. A Japanese-Taiwanese research group has analysed a femur and a tibia from the bed of the Penghu Channel off Taiwan and determined that they belonged to Denisovans who lived about 45,000 years ago. But judging by the

Archaeology · Observations · Science · Humour

I read a funny item in the newsletter of the Prehistoric Society of Great Britain: for forty years Ireland believed that the oldest bones of a domestic cow, dated to before…

I read a funny item in the newsletter of the Prehistoric Society of Great Britain: for forty years Ireland believed that the oldest bones of a domestic cow, dated to before 4000 BC, had been found at the Ferriter's Cove site in County Kerry, and that this was