Back door

Interestingly, the Arab opponents also got to know Saint George in Cappadocia, creating a Muslim counterpart, Al-Hidret, celebrated on the Christian Saint George’s Day as Hidirellez or Ederlezi

What is especially fascinating about the cup is not only that the symbolic source of the drink, the Sun Goddess herself, sits within it, but that the entire vessel is arranged like a complete sanctuary

Iran’s modern history has repeatedly unfolded in ways that made this line—together with the longing for dawn—feel painfully current again and again. Perhaps never more so than in recent weeks, following the brutally violent suppression of the protests that had been ongoing since late December

I couldn’t see the Good Shepherd fresco, but I did learn how, when Nicaean Christians buried under his protection, a pagan citizen in the same necropolis related to death

An exhibition titled The Pazzi Conspiracy has just opened at Berlin’s Bode Museum. It is not easy to find, as it is tucked away in the coin cabinet on the second floor. This is no coincidence: at the heart of the exhibition stands a medal commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici in the autumn of the very same year, to commemorate the crushed conspiracy

For example, if a younger pehlevân defeated an older one, he was obliged to kiss his hand after victory

Persian cafés, besides serving as hubs for community life, were also places for storytelling

Aramaic became the ubiquitous lingua franca of the Persian Empire, and thanks to well-educated, multilingual Aramaic scribes, the administration’s writing was also conducted in it

The multitude of languages says the same thing in unison — in Greek, Armenian, Ottoman Turkish written in Arabic script, and in French alike: this was once the shop of Hâji Âgiâh, who sold amber combs and no doubt other expensive amber goods as well

Shiraz. Among the twisted columns of the Vakil Mosque, built in the 18th century at the height of the city’s golden age, two beautiful girls are taking photos of each other

The magi, on this occasion, placed the heads of two sacrificed animals—one white and one black, a ram and a goat—on a rock serving as an altar, facing the immense sacred peaks of the Caucasus

The village has preserved over 150 wind towers: they serve as natural passive cooling for the houses, and each one is decorated differently

Locals refer to the place as “the judgment descended here,” and they speak of the “destroyed cities” as “those who were locked into the heat.” In the desert, one must not swear or even shout, because “the earth hears and throws it back,” or because “the wind carries it up to the sky”: “here the word returns”—the word of judgment.

What did people do in the shops? They left with the shopkeepers—complete strangers—their bank card numbers and PIN codes, asking them to charge the amount later, once card payments were working again

This Hafez verse became widely known across Iran through the rendition of the great blues singer Mohsen Namjoo, from his 2007 album Toranj (Orange)

After the Council of Trent, the donkey disappears from quite a number of representations of the Flight, being considered an insufficiently noble animal

According to legend, the character was created when a poor Qin-era student paid for his biáng noodles by promising the illiterate restaurant owner that he would write down the character’s name

What could the Good Shepherd motif have meant to early Christians, if they so frequently chose it as a single or prominent image above their final resting place?

The fresco cycle and altarpiece in the Sassetti Chapel painted by Ghirlandaio encompass a multitude of very special stories and relationships

The walls of Nicaea were built during the Roman imperial period, when it was an imperial city and the seat of a council. After falling into Ottoman hands in 1331, the walls remained almost entirely intact, stretching five kilometers, with nearly a hundred towers and four gates.

Hanns Tschira accompanied the refugees from the Silesian German village of Lübchen throughout their five-week odyssey and documented it in around 140 photographs

“Many years later, facing the burnt white of the screen, the sixty-year-old writer recalls the distant dusk when his father took him to see the whale”

My grandfather, standing beside me, was already past sixty at the time. He was a powerful, impressive man. I loved him dearly

Military cemeteries are documents of grand history, colored pins on a general’s map

The most widespread Russian type of Hagia Sophia stems from a pious misunderstanding, depicting Hagia Sophia as “Saint Sophia” accompanied by her three daughters, Vera, Nadezhda, and Lyubov

It is equally remarkable that at least this one Byzantine church has survived more or less in its original form out of the twenty that once stood in Nicaea, and out of the many thousands across the country

Only a few years ago, archaeologists from Bursa University discovered, from aerial photographs of Lake İznik and its surroundings near Nicaea, that ruins were emerging beneath the water — the remains of a large basilica

“Control language and you control thought.” If people—thanks to Russian state brainwashing—automatically attach these connotations to a concept, they naturally reach the conclusions suggested by the authorities and act accordingly

The Hebrew inscription on the front reads: “Simcha, son of Salman, simcha forever.” Since שִׂמְחָה simcha means joy, the second simcha isn’t just a repetition of the name—it conveys a wish for everlasting joy

The baths were less about washing and much more about social life. This was where Tbilisians and foreign merchants met for family gatherings, business talks, and celebrations. Future mothers-in-law could discreetly inspect potential brides without veils

Back in the fifth century BCE, Ezra and Nehemiah, while composing the Torah, may have purged from it the Babylonian and Canaanite creation myths. Yet the vanquished stars of those tales—Leviathan, Behemoth, and the Ziz bird—found a cozy refuge in poetry, the Psalms, the Book of Job, and the rabbinic tradition that interprets them. And there they’ve been quietly thriving for three thousand years.

The Iranian regime erected and unveiled a statue version of the bas-relief celebrating Shah Shapur’s victory over Emperor Valerian yesterday in central Tehran, on Enghelab, the Revolution Square. According to the Iranian press, the statue is a serious warning to the West

Traditionally, each village held the “maiden market” on a different day, where parents ceremonially received visitors from other villages, led them to the main square, and had the girls perform dances

The jars, along with the gourds, baskets, instruments, and inscriptions, fill the room with the atmosphere of an antique shop or a small museum

The excavations led to sensational results during the Covid (2020-2022). Next to the still-functioning bath, an Etruscan bath sanctuary was uncovered, dating back to the 3rd century BCE. For seven centuries, bathers hoping for healing continuously enriched the site with bronze and other votive offerings

Not mere objects, not little knick-knacks for a shelf. Each one stands here in place of a real person, representing a moment of great need when divine help was sought

Vulnerable yet protective, like angels or perhaps the genius spirits of the forgotten Etruscan mythology.

If I were ever to build a studiolo again, I would choose a location like Giovanni Grimani’s, the Patriarch of Aquileia

When we speed past it on the highway as evening falls over Tirana, its curved concrete walls, reminiscent of the Ronchamp chapel, and the faintly glowing cross on its façade make me think it might be a modern church

We leave feeling very happy about what we had seen. We came to witness decay – and instead, we found life

The spectre of communism still haunts Tirana—today not through ideology, but in the form of wandering statues with no place to call home

Most of the figures are dressed in traditional attire and adopt a ritualized, almost sculptural posture for the camera, their faces closed, as though conscious of the legacy they are just leaving behind

Beneath each scene of the Creation and the episodes of first men’s story, are four quadrilobe panels with four grotesque creatures, on each of the twice ten pillars

Japanese tourists also come in, and they are very surprised, even touched. Japanese people do not know how popular Japanese prints are in the West, and they are shocked that there is a special shop for them here

So the devil himself danced in the person of Salome. This is why she must be depicted in contorted, unnatural poses, as if possessed by a devil

Thus, while the son outwardly dedicated the monument to his father, he was in fact erecting a memorial to himself—showing off his lineage, his virtue, and his means to commission such a work

We have seen enough ruined medieval churches in Svaneti to know that it is thanks to such local guardian angels that about a hundred of them have survived intact

Később egyesek azt mondták, hogy Tõll azt mondta: ha bajban vagytok, hívjatok. visszajövök és segítek. De ez erősen kétséges, mert Tõll nem volt a szavak embere.

The Estonian absurd does not stop at naive artists and everyday life, but also permeates high art.

Here, on the banks of the Daugava River, the first Christian missionary in the Baltics, the Augustinian monk Meinhard of Holstein, met the pagan Livonians

Every second Saturday in Riga, a flea market is held in the Wöhrmann Garden (since the Baltic Germans left, Vermanes dārzs) next to Berga Bazārs

With such a history, it is no coincidence that Latvians know exactly which side to stand on and what to expect if their former oppressors prevail again

The warehouse workers were too lazy to sort the sheets and told him to take it all. He shipped four hundred tons of map sheets in several train cars

We got to know Lajos Erdélyi in our childhood from his photo album about the Jewish cemeteries of Transylvania

Pictures, even the most realistic pictures, do not depict reality, but use conventional formulas through which the viewer reconstructs a certain image of reality in himself

The exhibition is titled Gilgamesh, about the man who tried to bring light to his dear friend in the underworld. He failed to bring him back, but he learned from him what death is

The yaks not only live, but sometimes also die, and if this happens unplanned, then the hour of the vultures comes

As the statue bearers see each other at the end of the two streets leading onto the square, the processions start, and the statue of Christ bows before His mother, the Sardinian men carrying it before the Sardinian women carrying Mary

The inscription on the school board reads: “Who was in church at Easter?” and the little pioneers write down the names of those they know were there. We can only imagine what happens next

There was a Christmas in Kashan as well, at least once. And guess what, one of the participants was Hungarian

A walking crowd appears in front of us, led by huge turbaned figures. A young woman with a tall red lampshade on her head stands out of them. “They are bringing the bride now”

The man who survived the flood did not meet his goddess mate on earth, but in heaven, where he was guided up by the wise old monkey. This is why the Mosuos venerate the monkey

The mountain peoples build towers, as if only those twenty meters were needed, added to their thousand or two-thousand-meter high surface to reach the sky at arm’s length

What is this? A reaincarnation of the destroyed Buddha? Or was it not destroyed after all, only withdrawn from the open area – where the whole city could see it – into a closed building as a compromise?

In the border regions of Tibet, predominantly inhabited by nomads, in Kham and Ando provinces, the monasteries have been the main territorial and social organizing factors

Kangding’s best-known cultural product is the Love Song of Kangding. In China, it is second only to the national anthem in terms of familiarity and popularity

Coming from Sichuan’s Chengdu, the caravans entered Tibetan territory in Dartsedo, today’s Kangding city. This was traditionally considered the gateway of Tibet, as it is still today

The term Andachtsbild denotes such religious images which, although coming from biblical stories, are not illustration, but rather extremely concentrated summaries and emblems of them

I asked the monks in Kandze Monastery where their cemetery was. They looked at me shocked, then pointed upwards. “Do you bury in the sky?” “Yes.”

Here, especially if it is said by a foreigner, from whom one would not expect it, it is no longer a greeting, but rather a magic spell that causes deep astonishment and increased euphoria. In fact, it calls to the surface, as if by magic, all the beauty, joy of life and kindness that characterize the people living here

I wonder what a Jewish woman’s tombstone with a Hebrew inscription is doing in the wall of a Franciscan monastery founded in the mid-15th century?

When a big storm is nearing – she continues –, the men go out to the sacred field, where they ask the spirits to avert any calamity. But they also go out to beg for rain in times of drought. Both usually work

Saint George, triumphantly enthroned on the wooden gate of Msho Arakelots, could not save others, but he could save himself. The door is still standing today in the Western Armenian section of the Yerevan History Museum

Saint George is the patron saint of Georgia. What’s more, Georgia got its name from him. And, what’s more, it is likely that the figure and cult of the knight St. George the dragon-slayer also arose in Georgia sometime in the 9th or 10th centuries

You can still see the gates of the dead when walking along Via dei Consoli. You can identify them by their narrow, high Gothic arches, and by the fact that the masonry of the walled in ones is different from the elegant block stones of the house

The main function of shepherds’ churches was to serve as a ritual meeting place of shepherds transhuming – that is, marching up and down between winter and summer pastures – on April 25 and September 29

He tells me that he really likes apples, but the other day he almost choked on one, it got stuck in his throat and he could barely cough it out. As he talks, I can see that he only has one tooth like in the cartoons. It is difficult to safely eat apples like this

And how can hundreds of thousands of tourist visit a cult place that serves prayer? Erdoğan dismissed these problems: “Like all our mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be wide open to locals and foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims”, he promised. That promise has since been proven to be a lie.

“Look, my grandmother just died. She worked as a seamstress in a factory all her life. Under the bed where she spent her last two weeks, we found a bag of potatoes. She has been sewing such bags all her life. This is how my gradmother’s life passed.”

The history of Morocco is a succession of capitals. The successive dynasties, having overthrown the previous one, always create a new capital in their own tribal territory, spectacularly humiliating the city of their defeated opponent, looting and destroying it

Something else perished, too — a true emblem of the Church, a jewel of the old basilica, and one of the masterpieces of a new artistic age. The façade of the old basilica had once been adorned with a monumental mosaic by Giotto: the Navicella, or The Boat of Saint Peter

Yet, for all their pomp, these coffin-bearers look oddly delicate. Shouldn’t an admiral’s coffin be carried by grizzled sailors or rugged soldiers? Instead, Mélida gives us smooth-faced, almost feminine figures — in fact, they are women dressed as men.

There is only one community institution in the village, the “Antigua Peña”, Old Club, that is, the pub. There is no store: a grocery truck comes twice a day with bread, meat, fish and other basic foods, and on Saturdays the mobile supermarket. “In which other village do they deliver the goods to your door?” the residents say proudly

These days, the procession of the Magi is accompanied by a brass band that fills the streets with rumor commensurate with the importance of the procession. In the nineteenth century, however, the chaotic musical background was provided by the population itself, and its typical instruments were the conch horn and the glass trumpet

Assa (1987), directed by Sergei Soloviev, was as much a cult film of the Soviet change of regime as Hair was of an earlier change in the West. The theme songs of the movie – just like Aquarius in Hair – all became “anthems” of the change

Guests recieve the beautiful loaves distributed at the home of a wedding, and usually keep them as souvenirs, put on the wall or in display cases. I visited an old Sardinian woman whose wall was covered with such breads, and she was able to tell her life story by reviving the memories related to them.

The small black wild animals are the trademark of the wilderness. Medieval imagination did not consider the Egyptian desert an uninhabited wasteland, but rather a barren yet populated place, home to various wild creatures. Among these were ravens, which, by the Lord’s command, fed Saint Anthony the Hermit and Saint Paul with bread; deer that nourished other hermits with milk; lions from whose paws merciful hermits extracted thorns, binding them in lifelong gratitude

Not only did the geese make Saint Martin a bishop, but they also chose the day of his feast in the calendar. And what’s the thanks?

From the main street, you can see the river and the more modern houses built on the other bank. This is where the old town got its name: 望鱼 wàng yú means “watching the fish”. Local folklore holds the rock itself to be a curled-up cat watching the fish playing in the water before her nose

Az eredeti spanyol Don Quijote nem egészen hétszáz oldal, míg a Radnóti nevét viselő változat a legtöbb kiadásban az egész oldalas illusztrációkkal együtt is kevesebb száznyolcvannál

From before the Byzantine destruction of icons in the 8th and 9th centuries, barely a dozen Christian panel paintings have survived, the vast majority of them in the St. Catherine Monastery in Sinai, where the hand of the image-destroying Byzantines did not reach

“How many Armenians are there in the city?” I ask the young doorman. “Maybe we are six or seven families”, he replies. I wish the rebirth of this church would also mean the survival of the community.

And the three walls are in fact covered with sculptures, or more precisely, reliefs. Standing men in tall, peaked hats and knee-length tunics, in the style of the Parthian – i.e. Hellenized Persian – art of the 2nd and 3rd century

Since then, the official Turkish historiography has presented the event as an Armenian rebellion and collaboration with the Russian enemy, which had justified the “displacement” (as they call their massacre) of the Anatolian Armenians

In Diyarbakır at ten o’clock in the evening, there is still a lot of life. The teahouses, cafés, pastry shops, restaurants, and the terraces of the caravanserais are full, people are chatting over tea at small tables in the square in front of the Great Mosque, Kurdish musicians are playing, singing and dancing in the streets

I recently wrote about how Mussolini’s frasi celebri – quotes from his historical speeches, which, writes Umberto Eco, “marked all my childhood, and whose most significant passages we memorized in schools”

The ceremony of the meeting, s’incontru, is perhaps most traditionally celebrated in Oliena. The background atmosphere and noise is provided by the descendants of the bandits of Oliena, who stand on the rooftops from erly morning, and shoot blanks

Cumalıkızık legjobb tulajdonsága, hogy egyáltalán nem néz ki világörökség-falunak. Nincs kiglancolva, nincs tele szuvenírboltokkal és boutique hotelekkel, nem jönnek ide negyvenfős turistabuszok. Cumalıkızık pont úgy néz ki, mint egy hagyományos hegyi falu gyerekkoromban a Mátrában vagy Székelyföldön

Bursa nagymecsetét, az Ulu Dzsámit a vár alatt Oszmán dédunokája, I. Bajazit szultán építette 1396-99 között annak a fényes győzelemnek az emlékére és zsákmányából, amelyet 1396-ban Nikápolynál aratott a Zsigmond király vezette egyesült európai haderő, az utolsó középkori lovagság fölött

They were converted to Christianity by British missionaries, and from the parallels between their own mythology and the Bible, they came to the conclusion that they were actually Jews, and that their mythical ancestor, Manmási, was none other than Menasseh, the son of patriarch Joseph

He was born and grew up here in the neighborhood, went to this school, and although he spent most of his life away from here, as a miner, he returned after his retirement. He was pained by the state of the mosque. As the only resident of the old Afanour, he moved into the teacher’s room and restored the mosque complex with his own hands

As comical as it was to build a Gothic cathedral in Biniamar, just as banal and farcical was the reason for its failure

The arrival of the first swallows and the first storks, the official seal of the new spring, is a big event in the life of a small town. But since it is not about the visit of great people, saints or rulers, it rarely occurred to anyone to include this event in the local history.

In eastern Sicily, where Petralia is located, the monarchy achieved more than two thirds. This might be also the reason of the survival of the monarchist campaign inscriptions in Petralia, as silent witnesses of the resistance against the colonizing North

In only a few pictures does the true meaning of wonder appear: the epiphany. The wonder that is always present and sometimes shines on. The entry of authenticity into reality, or rather the cathartic recognition of its presence in reality

Its shape, ears and legs are of an elephant, only its nose is too short, as if the sculptor found impossible to accept the existence of an animal carrying its tail on its face

The third poem is centered on a widespread topos in Arabic poetry, the gazelle symbolizing a beautiful woman. However, while male poets describe the gazelle from the outside, as the object of their desire, Qasmūna identifies with her, and shows how the gazelle sees herself

The new gate no longer regarded those coming from Florence as enemies, but rather as well-disposed visitors—just as Ferdinando himself proved to be. The gate’s façade was adorned with the Medici coat of arms, and beneath it was inscribed the greeting: Cor magis tibi Sena pandit.

At dawn, on the verge of dream and awakening, the verses of the old Greek memoriter snake out of my memory, with galloping iambs ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯ ˘ ¯ ¯, like Franz Marc’s dream-colored horses. It was Anacreon who wrote them in this serpentine way

This statue, erected through the fundraising efforts of the British community in Czechia, commemorates the winged Czech lions who, in the 1940s, protected the ground-going British lions against the attacks of the German eagles

He was the best performer of one of the subtlest music in the world. A piece of the music itself died with him

The chroniclers of the Arab conquest between 665 and 689 report that among the Atlas Berber tribes, many followed the Jewish faith

“Be bold as the tiger, light as the eagle, run like the deer, and be strong as the lion, to do the will of your Heavenly Father.”

Is it possible that the Ethiopian tradition has retained something from the Jewish myth, in which, perhaps, the Archangel Raphael fulfilled the subjugation of the ancient water monster at His command?

It’s raining in Bethlehem. It started this morning in Jerusalem, and the Wall—which usually keeps everything else at bay—can’t stop this

It is particularly interesting that Noah’s face is covered with a veil, and he also hides his hands in his robe. This is how Mohammed is usually depicted from the late Middle Ages on

The mamuthones and issohadores, while dancing through the village, en-route stop at every bar, where they dance around the room, and they get free drink in return

“If you want to see a carnival, as there is no other in all the earth, go to Mamoiada, where it begins on the day of St. Anthony…”

Although the first Jews expelled from Vienna settled in Nikolsburg’s Jewish quarter as early as 1421, the true flourishing of the community began in the 16th century. This was when Nikolsburg became the political, cultural, and spiritual center of Moravian Jewry

Arriving at Sighetu Marmației, the first thing I see is a camel. Right after the town sign — its head adorned with a halter in red-white-green, the national colors of Hungary, its legs shackled. While I watch, it doesn’t stoop once to graze, turning away in disgust from the lush, flowery meadow

The last time it was ten years ago that I got a poem to a picture in the blog, from Wang Wei. It seems a long time, but to inspire a good poem every ten year is not a bad ratio. I am looking forward to the next one

To the little one-eyed beggar, who sang Rumi poems from one end to the other of the Tehran metro

The photos, by Georgian boys leaving for the Great War, were left to their parents and brothers, so they would remember them after they died somewhere in Galicia, the Hungarian Carpathians, or under Przemyśl

Messi kicks the second goal. A member of the company rises to toast, with an archaic clay vessel in the hand, filled to the brim. Drinks it out, and passes it to the next. “What do they drink to?” “To the ancestors. On St. George’s night we drink to the ancestors, who died, so Georgia could live in freedom.”

The lintel of the Metekhi Church gate has been polished bright over eight hundred years by the kisses of worshippers entering the church. The church, perched on a rock by the river in the heart of Tbilisi, was built in the 5th century by King Vakhtang Gorgasali, the founder of the city, as the chapel of his palace

“Where you from?” “America.” “Have camera?” “Yes, I have a camera.” “Take my picture!” “Ladno.” After thinking about it briefly, the man in the middle turns around and decides not to be in the picture

After the Tatar Pass, the road goes down in the Prut valley, the first settlement is Tatariv, that is, Tatars’ Town

Another day ended in the Janowska, the last German labor camp which still works in the same buildings and with the same function on the outskirts of Lwów.

After the recovery of the frescoes and on the initiative of a committee composed in the name of St. Anastasia, during the Yugoslavian war two icons, representing the saint, traveled around the Earth aboard the Mir space station as a harbinger of peace.

In Persian the flower is also called لاله اشک lâle-ye ashk, the weeping lily. According to tradition, it bears this name because it witnessed the murder of the pre-Islamic Iranian hero Siavush, and ever since—unlike other lilies—it mourns him with bowed head

It is attested by this secret sign for the initiates that we have discovered in Palma de Mallorca, while walking up on the Carrer Pietat

But before that and before everything else I wanted to make my pilgrimage to the house which at that time meant for me Libeň and Prague

Muska is Russian through and through. Even at her happiest she can sit there with the same loftily offended expression as first-year Russian students on the opening day of term at a Western university

The Crown Prince looks with that infinitely melancholic glance into a world accessible only to him, which is the attribute of a nation fatigued under the burden of twenty-five centuries of a highly refined civilization

The initial in the so-called Kaufmann Haggadah, created in 14th-century Catalonia, depicts a king lifting a cup to offer a blessing: BRWK, that is, Baruk Adonai, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

In the feast of Saint Anthony in Sa Pobla of Mallorca, besides the blessing of the animals, the fire, the pig-roasting and the common banquet, the demons come on the scene as well who, while the saint lived a life of hermit in the desert, “appeared in the form of various beasts, and with their claws and corns were cruelly tearing him.”