NB! · Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Reportage
Visited the underground chambers of the Kitay-gorod Wall. Atmospheric, slightly eerie: a whole city beneath the earth indeed, with yet another city below it, though that one has long since been filled in with bricks.
NB! · Observations · Reportage
Special thanks for allowing me to visit the wine cellars of Golubitsky, which supplies Russian tables with more than a million bottles of white, red, rosé and sparkling wine a year. I am sure that this location deserves the particular attention of artists and could become part of another art
Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Reportage
Went to the Photobiennale 2020 at MAMM, sharing my photographic impressions. Photographs of photographs are a genre of their own, and one that, I think, would be far more successful were it not for the glass between the viewer and the object of art. The first thing you see on
Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Heritage · Society · Reportage
In my view, the trouble with events of this kind, where people try to stand up to commercial giants backed by the authorities at every turn, lies not even in the futility of such undertakings in our country, but in the fact that the camp of defenders of the righteous
Art · Observations · Reportage · Society Pages
NB! · Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Heritage · Reportage
Came to see the completion of the reconstruction of the Northern River Terminal, at a cost of 2.5 billion roubles. The star will not be hoisted onto the spire today because of the squally wind. The gemstones of the hammer and sickle all seem to be in place
Architecture · Moscow · Heritage · People · Reportage
Today marks the 130th birthday of the Russian architect Konstantin Stepanovich Melnikov. In honour of the jubilarian, my team and I from the Shchusev Museum of Architecture visited the surviving Moscow monuments of his work. A sorry picture, it must be said. All of them, with the exception of the
Books · Museums · Heritage · People · Reportage
Today we travelled with the intellectual Club 418 to Anton Pavlovich Chekhov's favourite estate, Melikhovo, which became the true family nest of the Chekhovs and gave the world dozens of works of Chekhovian classic. This year the Chekhov Museum at Melikhovo celebrates its 80th anniversary, and Anton Pavlovich
NB! · Faith · Observations · Reportage · Rome
Museums · Heritage · Nature · Reportage
An inspection of the trees has confirmed the hypothesis of colleagues from the Pushkin museums that the park at Khmelita may well be a Masonic one. Every tree and its position means something, though these details will be worked out later; it would be very interesting to see the final
Museums · Heritage · Nature · Reportage
A manor park is a very complex organism, which needs not only care but sometimes a proper medical examination and treatment. Over the weekend a most interesting museum event took place: in my beloved Khmelita the park was given a check-up. It should be said that the park of
Art · Monarchies · Pop Culture · Reportage
It is the age of Napoleon that is most vividly represented at the impressive exhibition of the jewellery house of Chaumet at the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo. The history of the house is inseparable from the reign of Bonaparte and his empresses: the many gifts ordered by Napoleon for