Architecture · Books · Museums · People
The third floor of the house is the summit of Victor Hugo's architectural creativity. This is the fully glazed attic with a panoramic view, which, as he put it, took in all of France: from here one can see the island itself and the distant line of the
NB! · Architecture · Books · Museums · Paris · People
The second floor is arranged in the Renaissance spirit. There is an enormous, solemn study with an adjoining tiny library, where Hugo housed the library he had rescued in exile, and a bedroom with carpets and tapestries of every conceivable colour. And a symbolic corridor leading upwards, ending in a
Architecture · Books · Museums · People
One of Hugo's descendants said of this house that it is an autograph spread over three floors and a poem in several rooms. Resembling a fairy-tale labyrinth, the house presents Hugo as writer, poet, dramatist, draughtsman and decorator, and truly reflects his creative genius. Symbolism pervades Hauteville
Architecture · Books · Society · People
On 2 December 1851, after the coup d'état, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte banished Victor Hugo from France. The writer fled to Belgium, passing himself off as a printing-house worker, Jacques Firmin Lanvin, and from there he was expelled in 1852. In 1854 he finally settled on Guernsey, an
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Four-year-old little Victoria, the future Queen of Great Britain, in black. Victoria spent nearly half her life in black, from the death of Prince Albert in 1861 to the end of her days in 1901
Observations · Science · Education · People
Natalia Ivanovna Basovskaya, medievalist, popularizer of science, author of many books and a wonderful human being, has passed away. Until her last years Natalia Ivanovna headed our department at RSUH. Students and teachers held her in great respect and, I shall not be afraid to say, admiration. Her learning, her
Books · People · Rome · Humour
His early childhood passed in Rome; he was brought up as is the custom among Roman grandees who are living out their days. His teacher, tutor, nursemaid and anything else you please was an abbé, a strict classicist, an admirer of the letters of Pietro Bembo, the writings of Giovanni
Aristocracy · Art · Museums · Mores · People
The international campaign opens with a day of women in world culture. I propose that we recall Pauline Bonaparte, Napoleon's favourite sister, whose famous sculptural portrait is considered one of the masterpieces of Antonio Canova. The aristocrat Camillo Borghese commissioned the work as a wedding gift for his
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Contemporaries described Most Serene Prince Konstantin Gorchakov as a very attractive man. Count Witte, for example, remembered Gorchakov as "remarkably handsome" and as someone who "until very recently drew attention by his appearance." This is not easy to grasp from the surviving photograph of an elegant,
Art · Observations · Mores · People · Humour
Portrait of the Reverend Thomas Gisborne and his wife Mary. A splendid umbrella, a cool dog and a remarkable likeness: do you not think so? He and his wife might be twins. People used to murmur that Gisborne had married for money: the girl from the wealthy Babington family was
Monarchies · Observations · Mores · People
Just think, what a tragic fate! Mary of Modena endured ten miscarriages, and five of her children died in infancy; and when at last a viable child came into the world, she was accused of having substituted a healthy baby for her real child, a sickly, feeble one, and most