NB! · Architecture · Paris

A detail of the interior decoration of the Château de Rambouillet, the summer residence of the French presidents outside Paris

Notre-Dame de Paris covered in scaffolding, with a yellow tower crane, behind the stone embankment of the Seine.

NB! · Architecture · Faith · Observations · Heritage · Paris

Reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris continues, seen from the Seine embankment

Work on the reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris is in full swing. But, frankly, one dreads to imagine what it will look like inside

Monarchies · Heritage · Society · Paris

Dinner at Versailles for Charles III and the electrification of the Hall of Mirrors in 1961

King Charles III will make his first state visit to France at the end of March, reportedly on the 27th. To mark the royal visit, the official dinner will be held at the Palace of Versailles, as it has been in the preceding 150 years of Franco-British relations. During

Page of an old bound manuscript with an ink drawing of a human figure with a large head and handwritten notes in the margins.

Archive · Art · Monarchies · Paris · People

Drawing kept by a court physician later bound into the journal of King Louis XIII

A self-portrait of Louis XIII, drawn by the Dauphin of France at the age of 6! The drawing was preserved by the court physician. The sheet was later bound into the journal of Louis XIII's activities as king.

Art · Observations · Paris

Compositional Similarity of Caillebotte’s “The Floor Scrapers” of 1875 and “The Oarsmen” of 1877

Note the striking similarity: Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers, 1875, and Gustave Caillebotte, Oarsmen, 1877. Moreover, in both the same rather unusual viewpoint from above has been chosen. Perhaps this is explained by the fact that Caillebotte was not so good at capturing faces, and so quite naturally sought compositional

NB! · Art · Paris · Pop Culture

In 1938 Elsa Schiaparelli presented the "Skeleton" dress, designed by Salvador Dalí

NB! · The East · Geography · Observations · Paris

A marker in the paving near the Luxor Obelisk in Paris, pointing the way to Thebes, whence the obelisk was brought in the 1830s

NB! · Art · Observations · Paris

I adore this horse from Édouard Manet's Races in the Bois de Boulogne, 1872

NB! · Art · Museums · Observations · Paris

Mood for the week: a porcelain Bolognese of the Meissen Manufactory, 1734

Mood for the week: a porcelain Bolognese of the Meissen Manufactory, 1734. Modelled by Johann Joachim Kändler, collection of the Louvre, donor a former consul of the Ottoman Empire in France, Isaac de Camondo

Art · Monarchies · Mores · Paris

The only reliable image of a masquerade at the Louvre, made at the wish of Louis XIV

People had danced in masks as early as the Renaissance, but the first masked ball as we know it appeared only at the court of the young Louis XIV, and it was held in the Louvre. The people in the centre of the hall hold hands and perform the old

NB! · Art · Paris · Humour

Gustave Courbet's The Origin of the World in Your Kitchen

NB! · Paris · People · Humour

What would the French do without Brigitte Macron's carbonara recipe? Probably what humanity has been doing without her views on the Indo-Pakistani conflict