Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City

17 April 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Living, Working, Building, Museums, Exhibitions, New York City Reading Time:  16 minutes

© flickr.com - ajay_suresh/cc-by-2.0

© flickr.com – ajay_suresh/cc-by-2.0

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum, located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is a National Historic Site. The museum’s two historical tenement buildings were home to an estimated 15,000 people, from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 2011. The museum, which includes a visitors’ center, promotes tolerance and historical perspective on the immigrant experience.   read more…

Kunstkamera in Saint Petersburg

15 February 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  7 minutes

© flickr.com - Dennis Jarvis/cc-by-sa-2.0

© flickr.com – Dennis Jarvis/cc-by-sa-2.0

The Kunstkamera (or Kunstkammer (German for “Culture Room” (literally) or “Art Chamber”, typically used for a “cabinet of curiosities“) is a public museum located on the Universitetskaya Embankment in Saint Petersburg, facing the Winter Palace. Its collection was first opened to the public at the Summer Palace by Peter the Great in 1714, making it Russia’s first museum. Enlarged by purchases from the Dutch collectors Albertus Seba and Frederik Ruysch, the museum was moved to its present location in 1727. Having expanded to nearly 2,000,000 items, it is formally organized as the Russian Academy of Science‘s Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, abbreviated in Russian as the МАЭ or МАЭ РАН.   read more…

White House of the Confederacy in Richmond

1 February 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, House of the Month, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  6 minutes

© Farragutful/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Farragutful/cc-by-sa-4.0

The White House of the Confederacy is a historic house located in the Court End neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. Built in 1818, it was the main executive residence of the sole President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, from August 1861 until April 1865. It was viewed as the Confederate States counterpart to the White House in Washington, D.C. It currently sits on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University.   read more…

Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren

28 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  6 minutes

© EmDee/cc-by-sa-3.0

© EmDee/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Royal Museum for Central Africa or RMCA (Dutch: Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika or KMMA; French: Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale or MRAC; German: Königliches Museum für Zentralafrika or KMZA), also officially known as the AfricaMuseum, is an ethnography and natural history museum situated in Tervuren in Flemish Brabant, Belgium, just outside Brussels. It was built to showcase King Leopold II’s Congo Free State in the International Exposition of 1897.   read more…

Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism

27 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  4 minutes

© flickr.com - Fred Romero/cc-by-2.0

© flickr.com – Fred Romero/cc-by-2.0

The NS-Dokumentationszentrum is a museum in the Maxvorstadt area of Munich, Germany, which focuses on the history and consequences of the Nazi regime and the role of Munich as Hauptstadt der Bewegung (′capital of the movement′).   read more…

Culture Brewery in Berlin

20 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Berlin, Museums, Exhibitions, Opera Houses, Theaters, Libraries, Universities, Colleges, Academies Reading Time:  11 minutes

© Kaspar Metz

© Kaspar Metz

The Berlin Kulturbrauerei (literally “Culture Brewery”) is a 25,000 square metres (270,000 sq ft) building complex in Berlin, Germany. Originally built and operated as a brewery, its courtyards and unique architecture have been protected as a monument since 1974 and it is one of the few well-preserved examples of industrial architecture in Berlin dating from the end of the 19th century.   read more…

Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel in Montreal

16 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  6 minutes

© DXR/cc-by-sa-4.0

© DXR/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel (chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, “Our Lady of Good Help”) is a church in the district of Old Montreal in Montreal, Quebec. One of the oldest churches in Montreal, it was built in 1771 over the ruins of an earlier chapel. The church is located at 400 Saint Paul Street East at Bonsecours Street, just north of the Bonsecours Market in the borough of Ville-Marie (Champ-de-Mars metro station).   read more…

Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg

12 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  7 minutes

© Andrew Shiva/cc-by-sa-4.0

© Andrew Shiva/cc-by-sa-4.0

The Peter and Paul Fortress is the original citadel of St. Petersburg, Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 and built to Domenico Trezzini‘s designs from 1706 to 1740 as a star fortress. Between the first half of the 1700s and early 1920s it served as a prison for political criminals. It has been a museum since 1924. Today it has been adapted as the central and most important part of the State Museum of Saint Petersburg History. The museum has gradually become virtually the sole owner of the fortress building, except the structure occupied by the Saint Petersburg Mint (Monetniy Dvor). The fortress contains several notable buildings clustered around the Peter and Paul Cathedral (1712–1733), which has a 122.5 m (402 ft) bell-tower (the tallest in the city centre) and a gilded angel-topped cupola. Other structures inside the fortress include the still functioning Saint Petersburg Mint building (constructed to Antonio Porta’s designs under Emperor Paul), the Trubetskoy Bastion with its grim prison cells, and the city museum.   read more…

Belgian Comic Strip Center in Brussels

10 January 2023 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Museums, Exhibitions Reading Time:  7 minutes

© TADOR/cc-by-sa-3.0

© TADOR/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Belgian Comic Strip Center (French: Centre belge de la Bande dessinée; Dutch: Belgisch Stripcentrum) is a museum in Brussels, Belgium, dedicated to Belgian comics. It is located at 20, rue des Sables/Zandstraat, in an Art Nouveau building designed by Victor Horta, and can be accessed from Brussels-Congress railway station and Brussels Central Station. The building was designed in 1905 by the world-famous architect Victor Horta, in Art Nouveau style, and served as a textile department store, the Magasins Waucquez. After Waucquez’s death in 1920, the building began to languish away, and in 1970, the firm closed its doors. Jean Delhaye, a former aide of Horta, saved the building from demolition, and by 16 October 1975, it was designated as a protected monument. Still, the building was in bad shape and victim to a lot of vandalism.   read more…

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