Aristocracy · Monarchies · People · Humour

There are many witty recollections of the brilliant statesman, scholar and courtier of the age of Peter III and Catherine II, Count Nikita Ivanovich Panin, but the most remarkable is when Panin confessed that for four months he had not answered an urgent

There are many witty recollections of the brilliant statesman, scholar and courtier of the age of Peter III and Catherine II, Count Nikita Ivanovich Panin, but the most remarkable is when Panin confessed that for four months he had not answered an urgent dispatch from Field Marshal Rumyantsev, who was

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The Ecstasy of Saint Francis, Giovanni Baglione, 1601

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Albert Camus and His Cat, Cigarette

Archive · Moscow · People

A Former Ballet Dancer Selling Flowers in Moscow Still Does the Splits at 60

Photograph of 1960 by Hilmar Pabel, the square in front of the Belorussky Station

Page of an old French book with a paragraph about Peter III and Prince Paul highlighted in yellow

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Peter III did not believe Paul was his son but did not show it in public

The Russians are unanimous that Peter III was a good parent, a good friend, a good husband; he would certainly have been a good father, had he not been convinced that "Prince Paul" was an exotic plant transplanted into a hothouse to which he had no key. In

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In his treatise "On the Preservation and Increase of the Russian People", Lomonosov reflects on the importance of a proper attitude to fasting, recalling the number of deaths from overeating on the eve of the fast and immediately after its end, while at t

According to Lomonosov, "pure repentance is a good life, which inclines God to mercy, to bounty and to love of us. Keep the commandments given by Christ, on which hang all the law and the prophets: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart (that is, not with

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In the New Year of 1766 the admirable orator and thinker Platon, Metropolitan of Moscow, delivered in the court church a Sermon before Catherine II and the heir Pavel Petrovich on the essence and nature of time

In the New Year of 1766 the admirable orator and thinker Platon, Metropolitan of Moscow, delivered in the court church a Sermon before Catherine II and the heir Pavel Petrovich on the essence and nature of time. The address is rich and beautiful; I shall quote a few passages, and

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Alexandre Dumas and his reply to a street ruffian who taunted him over his ancestry

Even after he had written The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas was still reproached with his origins. The son of a general who had single-handedly faced down whole regiments was nonetheless the great-grandson of slaves. Once a street ruffian tried to humiliate Dumas,

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The day of ten-year-old Tsesarevich Pavel at Catherine's court, from congratulations to the ball

I read how His Imperial Highness Pavel Petrovich, the future Emperor Paul I, celebrated his tenth birthday. The first to congratulate the Tsesarevich that morning was his confessor, the hieromonk Platon Levshin, after which the heir was led to the apartments of Her Majesty, and together with the Empress he

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Konstantin Lipskerov, 1916

Konstantin Lipskerov, 1916. Poems written under the impression of a journey to Turkestan

Books · Observations · People

Prosper de Crébillon Asks for Leniency in the Preface to His Unsuccessful “Triumvirate”

The French dramatist Prosper de Crébillon (1674-1762), named among Voltaire's chief rivals, took very hard the failure of his play "The Triumvirate", about Roman history and the events preceding the murder of Cicero, and the open rejection of it by the public. Crébillon was so

Museums · Society · Paris · People · Pop Culture

Lady Mendl and the Duchess of Windsor founded a wartime charity to aid the French army

American actress, designer and philanthropist Elsie de Wolfe (1865-1950), by marriage Lady Mendl, in a velvet cape created specially for her in 1938 by Elsa Schiaparelli. The cape is dedicated to the Fountain of Apollo in the park of Versailles and is called, accordingly, Apollo of Versailles. The garment