Aristocracy · In the Press · Monarchies · Paris · Pop Culture
On the English-language Tatler website a long piece on the couture history of the House of Dior has appeared, written by Amelia Windsor, granddaughter of the Duke of Kent. Amelia is not merely forty-second in line to the English throne: she combines modelling with editorial work at Tatler,
Geography · Maps · Observations · Paris
A map showing the journey time in days from Paris to French cities in the eighteenth century. Today the trip from Paris to Nantes takes 4 hours on an express train; three hundred years ago the same road would have demanded up to 8 days, which is more than the
NB! · Art · Museums · Society · Paris
“Truth Coming Out of Her Well”, where a soldier and a prelate would like to hide her. Édouard Debat-Ponsan. The painting was shown at the Salon of 1898, and the artist offered the canvas to Émile Zola in support of Captain Dreyfus
Architecture · Art · Museums · Paris
In 1880 Rodin was commissioned to make the entrance portal for the Museum of Decorative Arts, planned for Paris on the site of the burnt-out Palais d'Orsay. But Rodin failed to finish the work on time and returned the advance. The museum, however, had no need of
Observations · Paris · People · Humour
Marcel Achard
Art · Mores · Paris · People
The Blue Room, 1923. Suzanne Valadon. Suzanne Valadon (1865-1938) was the first woman admitted to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She fed her cats caviar, kept a goat in her studio, ate her failed paintings, and married a friend of her son.
NB! · Architecture · Museums · Heritage · Paris · Humour
Decorative elements of the Escalier Mollien in the Louvre before and after the removal of 120 years of grime, dust and soot. And are you still quite certain that your ceiling was grey to begin with?
Maps · Observations · Society · Paris
To see how history, economics, social circumstance and politics are bound together in real life, it is enough to look at the map of how Paris voted for Macron and Mélenchon, which is painfully reminiscent, on the one hand, of the map of the opposing forces during the revolution of
NB! · Paris · People · Nature · Humour
In 1917, the wife of the tenth President of France, Henriette Poincaré, was attacked in the garden of the Élysée Palace by an orangutan that tried to abduct her. The animal, according to different versions, escaped either from the Théâtre du Rond-Point or from the house of a diplomat
Art · Observations · Paris · Pop Culture
For a month now, a giant smiley has hung in the atrium of Galeries Lafayette to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the yellow grinning mug. Not only in Paris, by the way, but in Beijing and Shanghai too. Though one must admit that a half-century slapped across the eyes
Books · Paris · People
Saltykov-Shchedrin was not a particularly sociable man, nor one inclined to make new acquaintances: for many years he kept company with one and the same circle of people. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was not dazzled by foreign authors and did not cling to them. All the more
NB! · Architecture · Faith · Paris