Archaeology · Monarchies · Observations

To grasp how distorted the perspective of modern historical knowledge is, consider this: the pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, builder of one of the pyramids, stands much further away in time from Caesar, who travelled in Egypt and…

NB! · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour

As far as I can tell, nobody remembers palo santo apart from this unknown artist of the school of Georges de La Tour, yet for a while every lifestyle publication was waving it about

Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations

A drawing by the Greek artist Alekos Fassianos recalled Anna Romanova's exhibition "Argonauts of the Underground" at the Voznesensky Centre, with its linear graphic art of the 1950s and 60s, featuring works by Soosteri, Sobolev, Yakovlev, Sidur, Matisse a

A drawing by the Greek artist Alekos Fassianos recalled Anna Romanova's exhibition "Argonauts of the Underground" at the Voznesensky Centre, with its linear graphic art of the 1950s and 60s, featuring works by Soosteri, Sobolev, Yakovlev, Sidur, Matisse and Picasso. The exhibition was three years ago,

Faith · The East · Books · Observations · Science · People · Humour

René Guénon on buddhi as the perception of the transcendent and his life in Cairo

René Guénon writes that "intellect" once meant the perception of transcendent realities, and introduces the Sanskrit term buddhi, all but forgotten in the West. He explains that buddhi is the faculty of glimpsing another world, whose traces appear in the soul as intellectual intuitions. Apparently, the term is

Observations · Society

Women at 53.5% of the population per Rosstat and doubts over a 10% change in a year

Colleagues, all of you who write that women make up 63% of the population of Russia, please note: this claim refers to other publications on the internet, not to any specific recent count, which is simply never cited. Last year, the Federal State Statistics Service gave a figure of 53.

Books · Observations · Mores · People

Let us return briefly to the theme of Marina Tsvetaeva and the pink dress, which appears in her poems for good reason

Let us return briefly to the theme of Marina Tsvetaeva and the pink dress, which appears in her poems for good reason. The dress also caught the attention of Ekaterina Gorpinko, who examined the history of Tsvetaeva's "pink dress" in greater detail for her book "

Museums · Observations · Heritage · Science · Paris

Four gold nuggets stolen from the National Museum of Natural History in Paris

Shocked to Learn That Several Gold Nuggets Were Stolen Last Week from a Paris Mineralogy Gallery. The theft took place in the early hours of 17 September. The perpetrators entered the hall of mineralogy and geology at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris by disabling the security system

Detail of a painting: two pink roses and green leaves with dewdrops in a glass vase on a marble ledge.

NB! · Art · Observations · Nature

Pink roses in a glass vase in a painting by Jean François van Dael

In my opinion, Jan Frans van Dael has captured the loveliest variety of rose in the world. I do not know what it is called, but these flowers are magnificent

Art · Museums · Observations · People

The bronze mask of Igor Shelkovsky, made by the sculptor Boris Orlov, seems to me a direct allusion to the Mycenaean golden mask of Agamemnon

Shelkovsky's mask is on show in the Artists' Village on Maslovka. The mask of Agamemnon is in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens

Architecture · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations

Museum of the Artists' Town on Verkhnyaya Maslovka opens in Moscow

I did not know that Moscow had a little neighbourhood where, from the 1930s onwards, outstanding Soviet artists lived and worked side by side. Igor Grabar, Boris Ioganson, Geliy Korzhev, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Tyshler, Semyon Chuikov: the names of these luminaries are familiar to everyone, but one need only imagine

Art · Observations · Society · Reportage · Ethnography

We have already said a great deal about Blazar, but I cannot help returning once more to the design section that so appealed to me, and dwelling on one of its brightest stands: the stand of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, designed by the architect Misha Maslo

We have already said a great deal about Blazar, but I cannot help returning once more to the design section that so appealed to me, and dwelling on one of its brightest stands: the stand of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, designed by the architect Misha Maslov, which the fair named

Aristocracy · Monarchies · Observations · People · Humour

Theory linking Kate Middleton to the Rothschilds through her mother

There is a very amusing theory that Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, is a Rothschild on her mother's side. Her mother, née Goldsmith, is supposed to have come from the Goldsmith-Rothschild family. The theory is often refuted, but then such a fact would hardly be something to