Louis XIV, who nearly drowned in the Palais Royal fountain, gave the palace to his brother

As a child, Louis XIV nearly drowned in a fountain of the Palais-Royal, then known as the Palais-Cardinal, where Anne of Austria moved from the Louvre with her two sons after the death of Cardinal Richelieu. Broadly speaking, this unpleasant incident, together with the thoroughly distasteful impression left by the invasion of the palace by the Frondeurs, who burst into the young king's apartments, taught Louis to dislike the sumptuous palace in the heart of Paris. Louis even broke Richelieu's will, which had bequeathed the palace to the king and his direct descendants, when he gave it to his younger brother Philippe of Orléans

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

Louis XIV, who nearly drowned in the Palais Royal fountain, gave the palace to his brother

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s