I recently came across a discussion that took place in the pages of the literary criticism magazine The Explicator in 1944. Its subject was the poem “When the lamp is shattered” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Most of the experts characterized…
Many famous buildings are interesting primarily from the outside; examining their façades is enough to make a fairly complete and vivid impression of them. The Palau Güell does not welcome such treatment for itself. Enter it and go through it…
“Either I’m wrong, or The Queen of Spades is really a masterpiece,” Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky remarked in a letter to Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich. Unfortunately, I have no idea what he answered the composer. But if I were in his…
Some online newspapers place warnings about shocking content above images that can startle sensitive people. I should have hidden all the photos from my article under a content warning as well. Once you take a close look at the central…
Monuments to world-renowned personalities – impressive cast figures, equestrian statues, or stelae with busts – are erected in city squares. The place that keeps the memory of less famous people is cemeteries. Wander around an old cemetery. You’ll see hundreds…
The French painter Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault left this world at the age of 31, but it would be wrong to say he died young. He witnessed several social epochs – the bourgeois revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte’s dictatorship, and the Bourbon…
Bedřich Smetana’s symphonic poem Vltava is often called Die Moldau. Both the words are the names of the same river, one is Czech and the other is German. When this piece of music was created the German language dominated the…
I am very fond of jewels. I like not earrings and rings with them but gemstones themselves. It is a real pleasure to touch a gem and know that its exquisite beauty is destined for a long – almost eternal…
Around 1592, an aspiring painter arrived in Rome in search of fame and fortune. The Eternal City didn’t welcome him – just a typical self-proclaimed genius without a single coin in his holey pocket! Moreover, the guy had a terrible…
My husband and I were sitting at a table in a little Berlin restaurant. While cooking dishes for us, the owner of the restaurant spoke to us politely. “Where are you staying?” he asked. My husband named the hotel. I…