Moscow · Pop Culture · Saint Petersburg
The lads have loved Russia for a long time. Neil Tennant, the duo's singer, has said that he learned the Russian alphabet at the age of 14, simply out of interest in Russian culture, music and history. All of which can, in fact, be detected already in the
NB! · Aristocracy · Architecture · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Saint Petersburg
The bathroom of Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna in the Winter Palace. Eduard Petrovich Hau, 1850s
Aristocracy · Monarchies · People · Saint Petersburg
On 3 July 1895 at Peterhof was born Irina, Princess of the Imperial Blood, daughter of Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Grand Duchess Xenia. Princess Irina's father was a grandson of Nicholas I through the latter's youngest son, her mother a sister of Nicholas II. In
Art · Museums · Heritage · Saint Petersburg
The inscription on Lucas Cranach the Elder's "Venus and Cupid" from the Hermitage collection. The painting returned to the permanent display today after restoration. Painted in 1509, Cranach's Venus is the first female nude in the history of German painting, Eve excepted.
Art · Books · Saint Petersburg
Beauty These proud brows of Vincian Madonnas I have met more than once on Russian peasant women, On young Ryazan wives, bent double with toil, Threshing sheaves on the threshing-floor at the crack of dawn. On tousle-headed boys who snare rooks And carry them in the sleeve of
Archive · Mores · Saint Petersburg
A restaurant coupon of 20 kopecks from the Saint Petersburg literary café "The Stray Dog Cellar. Mikhailovskaya Square, 5", 1912. Officially, the Stray Dog was called the "Artistic Society of the Intimate Theatre", and in this literary and artistic café the key Petersburg figures of the
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Society · Saint Petersburg
In her Decree to the Senate after the overthrow of Peter III, Catherine calls him not sovereign, not Grand Duke, not husband, not even Peter Fyodorovich, but "the former Emperor". Of herself, however, Catherine writes: "the true Sovereign" and "Our Imperial Majesty"
Coming Up · Art · Museums · Saint Petersburg
If you are weary of Moscow's sultry weather, you need the cool Baltic air. But you surely do not know that in Saint Petersburg, too, nobody is having an easier time of it, and one may well have to languish from the heat still more. I hope that
Architecture · Observations · Saint Petersburg
Continuing the Mondrian theme. A standard kindergarten building of sand-lime brick, erected in 1961 on the Moika embankment in Saint Petersburg, was turned into a hostel in the 2000s and repainted à la Mondrian for good measure. It must be said that the result was rather pleasing, genuinely Dutch.
NB! · Cinema · Pop Culture · Saint Petersburg · Humour
Tom Bombadil in Amazon's new season of "The Lord of the Rings" and Tom Bombadil in the 1991 Leningrad Television play "The Keepers". The Briton Rory Kinnear against the Soviet actor Sergei Parshin
Architecture · Faith · Monarchies · Heritage · Saint Petersburg
Near Kharkiv, at the site of the terrorist derailment of Emperor Alexander III's train, returning from the Crimea on 17 October 1888, from which he escaped with his entire family, a hermitage was founded, and in 1894 a magnificent church was built. The Church of Christ the Saviour
NB! · Books · Museums · People · Saint Petersburg