Elysée guard

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Republican guard in front of the Palais de l'Élysée (Elysée palace)
Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré
Quartier de la Madeleine, 8th arrondissement
Paris, July 2010

“The Republican Guard is the heir of the various bodies that preceded it in the course of French history and whose task was to honor and protect the high authorities of the State and City of Paris : Gardes Françaises of the Kings, Consular and Imperial guard of Napoleon, etc.. Its name derives from the Municipal Guard of Paris, established on 12 Vendémiaire XI (October 4, 1802) by Napoleon Bonaparte. It distinguished itself in battles of historical significance, including Danzig and Friedland in 1807, Alcolea in 1808 and Burgos in 1812.” (Republican Guard, Wikipedia)

Anchor Bankside

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Anchor Bankside
Park Street, Southwark
London, September 2014

“The Anchor Bankside is a pub in the London Borough of Southwark. It is in the Bankside locality on the south bank of the Thames close to Southwark Cathedral and London Bridge station. A tavern establishment (under various names) has been at the pub's location for over 800 years. Behind the pub are buildings that were operated by the Anchor Brewery. The Anchor started life as the ‘brewery tap room’ for the Anchor Brewery, first established in 1616. Michelin's travel guide incorrectly states that Anchor Bankside was rebuilt in 1676 after the Great Fire of London in 1666 destroyed it. This was impossible as the fire never reached the southern side of the Thames outside of the limits of the City of London. The book The Rough Guide to London states that the establishment was first built in 1770. The establishment was also rebuilt again in the 19th century.” (Anchor Bankside, Wikipedia)

Corte Verde

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Corte Verde (Green Court) by CZA, 2013
Corso Como
Porta Nuova
Milan, November 2016

Library and Learning Center

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Library & Learning Center by Zaha Hadid Architects, 2013
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (Vienna University of Economics and Business)
Welthandelsplatz
Vienna, June 2018

“Once inside, the Forum and the entry area are made to feel like extensions of the square outside. The generously proportioned atrium also serves as WU's main reception area. Wide, spiral ramps and stairways lead from the entry area up through the OMV Central Library, which extends funnel-like through 6 stories of the building. The top two floors are dedicated entirely to the library, where the wide, glass-fronted student work area offers a breathtaking view of Prater Park. The building's interior consists of a mix of self-study zones and student service units on the lower floors, combined with library space and spectacular views of the campus on the upper stories.” (Library & Learning Center, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien)

Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

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Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library)
Potsdamer Straße
Berlin, September 2011

“The Berlin State Library (German: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; officially abbreviated as SBB, colloquially Stabi) is a universal library in Berlin, Germany and a property of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. It is one of the largest libraries in Europe, and one of the most important academic research libraries in the German-speaking world. It collects texts, media and cultural works from all fields in all languages, from all time periods and all countries of the world, which are of interest for academic and research purposes. Some famous items in its collection include the oldest biblical illustrations in the fifth-century Quedlinburg Itala fragment, a Gutenberg Bible, the main autograph collection of Goethe, the world's largest collection of Johann Sebastian Bach's and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's manuscripts, and the original score of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.” (Berlin State Library, Wikipedia)

San Giovanni Battista

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San Giovanni Battista (Saint John the Baptist) by Giuliano Vangi, 1996
Lungarno Torrigiani / Via dei Bardi
Florence, December 2018

Perspective in Galleria

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Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
Piazza del Duomo
Milan, November 2016

“The structure consists of two glass-vaulted arcades intersecting in an octagon covering the street connecting Piazza del Duomo to Piazza della Scala. The street is covered by an arching glass and cast iron roof, a popular design for 19th-century arcades, such as the Burlington Arcade in London, which was the prototype for larger glazed shopping arcades, beginning with the Saint-Hubert Gallery in Brussels (opened in 1847), the Passazh in St Petersburg (opened in 1848), the Galleria Umberto I in Naples (opened in 1890) and the Budapest Galleria. The central octagonal space is topped with a glass dome. The Milanese Galleria was larger in scale than its predecessors and was an important step in the evolution of the modern glazed and enclosed shopping mall, of which it was the direct progenitor. It has inspired the use of the term galleria for many other shopping arcades and malls.” (Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Wikipedia)

Westerplatte Monument

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Westerplatte Monument
Westereplatte Peninsula
Gdańsk, September 2018

“The Westerplatte Monument, also known as the Monument of the Coast Defenders (Pomnik Obrońców Wybrzeża) is a war memorial located in Gdańsk, Poland, on the Westereplatte Peninsula in the Gdańsk harbour channel constructed between 1964-1966 to commemorate the Polish defenders of the Military Transit Depot (Wojskowa Składnica Tranzytowa, or WST) in the Battle of Westerplatte, one of the first battles in Germany's invasion of Poland, which marked the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The urban project including an unrealized museum was drafted by Adam Haupt, while the monument itself was designed by sculptors Franciszek Duszeńko and Henryk Kitowski. The construction of the monument was initiated by the Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites (Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa) and consists of 236 granite blocks transported from the quarries in Strzegom and Borów and weighing 1,150 tons. The monument is decorated with bas-reliefs and inscriptions, which pay tribute to the defence of the Polish sea coast, the naval battles of WWII in which Polish sailors and soldiers took part as well as the Battle of Lenino, Battle of Studzianki and Battle of Kołobrzeg. The shape of the monument resembles in its appearance a jagged bayonet impaled in the ground. Seven candle lights at the foot of the monument symbolically represent the seven days of heroic defence of Westerplatte by Polish soldiers against the numerically superior Nazi German army. The 22-meter high artificial mound on which the monument is located was erected from the earth collected from the redevelopment of the Port of Gdańsk.” (Westerplatte Monument, Wikipedia)

Jean-François Champollion

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Grave of Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832)
Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, (Père Lachaise Cemetery)
Quartier du Père-Lachaise, 20th arrondissement
Paris, July 2006

“Jean-François Champollion (also known as Champollion le jeune, the Younger; 23 December 1790 – 4 March 1832), was a French scholar, philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of Egyptology. A child prodigy in philology, he gave his first public paper on the decipherment of Demotic in 1806, and already as a young man held many posts of honor in scientific circles, and spoke Coptic and Arabic fluently. During the early 19th century, French culture experienced a period of 'Egyptomania', brought on by Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt during his campaign there (1798–1801) which also brought to light the trilingual Rosetta Stone. Scholars debated the age of Egyptian civilization and the function and nature of hieroglyphic script, which language if any it recorded, and the degree to which the signs were phonetic (representing speech sounds) or ideographic (recording semantic concepts directly). Many thought that the script was only used for sacred and ritual functions, and that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical ideas, and did not record historical information. The significance of Champollion's decipherment was that he showed these assumptions to be wrong, and made it possible to begin to retrieve many kinds of information recorded by the ancient Egyptians.” (Jean-François Champollion, Wikipedia)

William Heerlein Lindley

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William Heerlein Lindley by Norbert Sarnecki, 2011
Multimedia Fountain Park
skwer I Dywizji Pancernej
Warsaw, September 2018

“Sir William Heerlein Lindley (30 January 1853, in Hamburg – 30 December 1917, in London) was a British civil engineer. One of three sons of the famous British engineer William Lindley, WH Lindley worked together with his father on a number of projects and was a respected engineer in his own right. Between 1881 and 1889 he oversaw the construction of Warsaw waterworks, designed by his father in 1876-8.” (William Heerlein Lindley, Wikipedia)

Constellation

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“Constellation” by by Bernhard Heiliger, 1991
Terrace of Ibero-American Institute
Potsdamer Straße
Berlin, September 2011

Mosaic of St. Minias

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Mosaic depicting Christ between the Virgin and St Minias, 1297
San Miniato al Monte (St. Minias on the Mountain)
Viale dei Colli
Florence, December 2018

“The mosaic in the bowl-shaped vault of the apse (ca.1260) portrays Christ the Pantocrator between Mary, St. Minias and the symbols of the four Evangelists. The figures stand out Byzantine-style against a gold background in a field populated with oriental birds (symbolizing souls). On the left, there is a date palm, symbol of Christ Resurrected. The phoenix on the right, spouting flames from its beak, and the peacock on the left are both symbols of the Resurrection of Christ.” (The Church of San Miniato al Monte)

Barbakan Krakowski

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Barbakan Krakowski (Kraków Barbican)
Basztowa
Stare Miasto (Old Town)
Kraków, September 2018

“The Kraków Barbican (Barbakan Krakowski) is a barbican – a fortified outpost once connected to the city walls. It is a historic gateway leading into the Old Town of Kraków, Poland. The barbican is one of the few remaining relics of the complex network of fortifications and defensive barriers that once encircled the royal city of Kraków in the south of Poland. It currently serves as a tourist attraction and venue for a variety of exhibitions. Today the Barbican is under the jurisdiction of The Historical Museum of the City of Kraków. Tourists may tour its interior with its displays outlining the historical development of fortifications in Kraków.” (Kraków Barbican, Wikipedia)

Former City of London School

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Former City of London School
Victoria Embankment
London, September 2014

“The Victoria Embankment building, a grand building said to be in the Italian Renaissance style but actually in a high Victorian style with a steep pitched roof resembling that of a French chateau, was designed by Davis and Emanuel and constructed by John Mowlem & Co. at a cost exceeding £100,000 (about £11,158,064.52 in 2016). The designers designed the school as ‘amazingly unscholastic, rather like a permanent Exhibition Palace.’ On the front of the building are statues of Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, Newton and Sir Thomas More with ‘the first four emphasising the school's literary and scientific traditions [and] the last being a religious martyr, a famous lawyer and the author of Utopia.’ The building remained the home of the City of London School for a hundred years, although the site expanded to include not only the original building on the Victoria Embankment itself, but a range of buildings at right angles along the whole of John Carpenter Street, which was named after the founder of the school, and further buildings constructed at the back along Tudor Street, with the school playground, Fives courts and cloisters enclosed within the site. These other buildings were demolished when the school moved again in 1986. Here the school was adjacent to the City of London School for Girls, which was founded by the City of London Corporation as a sister school in 1894 and moved in 1969 to its present site in the Barbican, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama which has also since moved to the Barbican. It was also next to the traditional home of the British newspaper industry in Fleet Street. This building still stands and is protected by a preservation order; as of 2017 it was occupied by the investment bank JPMorgan, and it appeared on the left of the famous Thames Television ident from 1968 to 1989. The building still features the school's name above the door. The auxiliary buildings in John Carpenter Street and Tudor Street, however, were demolished shortly after the school vacated the premises.” (City of London School, Wikipedia)

“Egg”

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“Egg” by Alberto Garutti, 2012
Piazza Gae Aulenti
Porta Nuova
Milan, November 2016

Ponte Cagrana

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Ponte Cagrana, 2000
Seasonal pontoon bridge on the New Danube
Kagran / Donauinsel
Vienna, June 2018

“Ponte Cagrana is a temporarily established pontoon bridge for pedestrians and cyclists over so-called New Danube (Danube's diluvian bed), in Vienna, Austria. It is situated ~200 meters ~NNW of Reichsbrücke and connects Vienna's 22d district Kagran with Donauinsel (Danube Island.) The bridge is removed during winter time, and also if some level of flooding is reached -- which usually would occur during early spring, i.e. during winter closure. Note that the bridge's name is a [very probably intentional and humoristic!] misspelling: The structure was built after a recreation area at New Danube's left shore had been called Copa Cagrana, in a humoristic allusion to ‘Copacabana’, by the locals. Whilst German Brücke (bridge) is grammatically female, Italian ponte is male -- the name therefore should have been ‘ponte Cagrano’, if at all.” (Ponte Cagrana, Wikipedia)

Simón Bolívar

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Simón Bolívar by Pietro Tenerani, 1844 (cast 1997)
Potsdamer Straße
Berlin, September 2011

Costanza Bonarelli

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Bust of Costanza Bonarelli by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1637
Museo Nazionale del Bargello
Via del Proconsolo
Florence, January 2019

“The Bust of Costanza Bonarelli is a marble portrait sculpture by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, created in the 1630s. It is housed in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence, Italy. Considered among the most personal of Bernini's work, the bust depicts Costanza Piccolomini Bonarelli, the wife of Matteo Bonarelli, one of Bernini's pupils and coworkers. Bernini fell passionately in love with her. It is an exceptional sculpture in that it breaks with the tradition of seventeenth century portrait sculpturing and previews the style of the next century. The subject of the work is Costanza Bonarelli, with whom he fell in love when her husband was working as Bernini's assistant in 1636. Later, Bernini discovered his brother had also been having a vigorous affair with Costanza. This created tension and led to Bernini assaulting his brother and ordering a slave to harm Costanza (leading to a deep scar on the side of her face), which led Pope Urban VIII to intervene. He advised Bernini to get married, which he did, in 1639, to Caterina Tezio. Their marriage lasted 34 years and produced 11 children. Bernini would remain professional and increasingly religious to the last, when another Pope blessed him on his deathbed.” (Bust of Costanza Bonarelli, Wikipedia)

Molo w Sopocie

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Molo w Sopocie (Sopot Pier)
Plac Zdrojowy
Sopot, September 2018

“The Sopot Pier (Molo w Sopocie) - the pier in the city of Sopot, built as a pleasure pier and as a mooring point for cruise boats, first opened in 1827. At 511.5m, the pier is the longest wooden pier in Europe. It stretches into the sea from the middle of Sopot beach which is a popular venue for recreation and health walks (the concentration of iodine at the tip of the pier is twice as high as on land) or public entertainment events, and it also serves as a mooring point for cruise boats and water taxis.” (Sopot Pier, Wikipedia)

Abelard and Heloïse

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Grave of Abelard and Heloïse
Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, (Père Lachaise Cemetery)
Quartier du Père-Lachaise, 20th arrondissement
Paris, July 2006

“The story of Abelard and Héloïse has proved immensely popular in modern European culture. This story is known almost entirely from a few sources: first, the Historia Calamitatum; secondly, the seven letters between Abelard and Héloïse which survive (three written by Abelard, and four by Héloïse), and always follow the Historia Calamitatum in the manuscript tradition; thirdly, four letters between Peter the Venerable and Héloïse (three by Peter, one by Héloïse). They are, in modern times, the best known and most widely translated parts of Abelard's work. It is unclear quite how the letters of Abelard and Héloïse came to be preserved. There are brief and factual references to their relationship by 12th-century writers including William Godel and Walter Map. While the letters were most likely exchanged by horseman in a public (open letter) fashion readable by others at stops along the way (and thus explaining Heloise's interception of the Historia), it seems unlikely that the letters were widely known outside of their original travel range during the period. Rather, the earliest manuscripts of the letters are dated to the late 13th century. It therefore seems likely that the letters sent between Abelard and Héloïse were kept by Héloïse at the Paraclete along with the ‘Letters of Direction’, and that more than a century after her death they were brought to Paris and copied.” (Peter Abelard, Wikipedia)

St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria

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St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria by Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini, 1507
Pinacoteca di Brera (Brera Art Gallery)
Palazzo Brera
Via Brera
Milan, November 2016

“The huge canvas adorned the reception room of the Scuola Grande di San Marco in Venice, one of the city’s most prestigious and powerful confraternities. It was commissioned from Gentile Bellini in 1504 but was left incomplete on the death of the artist in 1507. We do not know what stage the picture had reached, but it was finished by his brother Giovanni, who was requested to do so in Gentile’s will. The attribution of the various parts of the work to each artist is still a matter of debate among scholars; however, the most widely held view assigns to Gentile the definition of the main lines of the scene, in which elements of Venetian architecture are superimposed on structures of clearly Mediterranean and Oriental derivation (for example the obelisks and the minarets of a mosque). These must have been familiar to the artist, who had been sent to work for Mehmed II at Constantinople in 1497. Giovanni, on the other hand, was probably responsible for the intense portraits of the members of the confraternity in the group on the left.” (St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria, Brera Pinacoteca)

Pomnik Bohaterów Getta

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Pomnik Bohaterów Getta (Ghetto Heroes Monument), 1948
Ludwika Zamenhofa
Warsaw, September 2018

“The Ghetto Heroes Monument (Polish: pomnik Bohaterów Getta) is a monument in Warsaw, Poland, commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 during the Second World War. It is located in the area which was formerly a part of the Warsaw Ghetto, at the spot where the first armed clash of the uprising took place.The monument was built partly of Nazi German materials originally brought to Warsaw in 1942 by Albert Speer for his planned works. The completed monument was formally unveiled in April 1948." (Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, Wikipedia)

Pferdekopf

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“Pferdekopf” (Horse head) by Hans Wimmer, 1976
Potsdamer Straße
Berlin, September 2011

Campanile di Giotto

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Campanile di Giotto (Giotto's Campanile)
Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower)
Piazza del Duomo
Florence, December 2018

“On the death in 1302 of Arnolfo di Cambio, the first Master of the Works of the Cathedral, and after an interruption of more than thirty years, the celebrated painter Giotto di Bondone was nominated as his successor in 1334. At that time he was 67 years old. Giotto concentrated his energy on the design and construction of a campanile (bell tower) for the cathedral. He had become an eminent architect, thanks to the growing autonomy of the architect-designer in relation to the craftsmen since the first half of the 13th century. The first stone was laid on 19 July 1334. His design was in harmony with the polychromy of the cathedral, as applied by Arnolfo di Cambio, giving the tower a view as if it were painted. In his design he also applied chiaroscuro and some form of perspective instead of a strict linear drawing of the campanile. And instead of a filigree skeleton of a gothic building, he applied a surface of coloured marble in geometric patterns. When he died in 1337, he had only finished the lower floor with its marble external revetment: geometric patterns of white marble from Carrara, green marble from Prato and red marble from Siena. This lower floor is decorated on three sides with bas-reliefs in hexagonal panels, seven on each side. When the entrance door was enlarged in 1348, two panels were moved to the empty northern side and only much later, five more panels were commissioned from Luca della Robbia in 1437. The number ‘seven’ has a special meaning in Biblical sense: it symbolizes human perfectibility.” (Giotto's Campanile, Wikipedia)

Surrogate City Bike Station

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Surrogate City Bike Station by Leopold Kessler
MOCAK, Lipowa
Kraków, September 2018

“Leopold Kessler is an artist who works in public space and whose interventions are usually some events, often filmed ones, or objects which take the form of permanent installations. One of these installations provisionally titled the dead café, can be seen in the 21er Haus museum foyer in Vienna. The object designed for the MOCAK collection belongs to the ‘in-utility convention’. It is a concrete model of a city bike station. From a distance it looks real but at a closer look it becomes obvious that what we see is a sculpture. This shock confirms our deeply-grounded conviction that all that surrounds us should be at our service.” (Outdoor Exhibits from the MOCAK Collection, MOCAK)

Dolphin lamp standard

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Dolphin (sturgeon) lamp standards
Albert Embankment
South Bank
London, September 2016

“Dolphin lamp standards provide electric light along much of the Thames Embankment in London, United Kingdom. Two stylised dolphins or sturgeons writhe around the base of a standard lamp post, supporting a fluted column bearing electric lights in an opaque white globe, topped by a metal crown. Many of the lamps are mounted on granite plinths. The lamp posts were designed by George John Vulliamy and modelled by Charles Henry Driver architect of the Victoria Embankment wall and river stairs. They were based on statues of dolphins or fish with intertwined tails at the Fontana del Nettuno in the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, which was constructed in 1822–23. In the late 1860s, the London Metropolitan Board of Works decided to light the new Thames embankments with electric lights, and asked for submissions of designs. Several possible designs were published in the contemporary illustrated press including the Illustrated London News and The Builder in March 1870, including Vulliamy's ‘dolphin’ design; a design by Timothy Butler decorated with climbing children and an overflowing cornucopia, cast by the Coalbrookdale Company; and a more restrained classical design by Joseph Bazalgette decorated with lion's feet, inspired by classical tripods, and modelled by S. Burnett.” (Dolphin lamp standard, Wikipedia)

Giuseppe Missori

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Monumento to Giuseppe Missori by Riccardo Ripamonti, 1916
Piazza Missori
Milan, November 2016

“Giuseppe Missori (11 June 1829 - 25 March 1911) was an Italian patriot, military leader during the Italian unification, and politician. He served under Garibaldi during the Second Italian War of Independence, the Expedition of the Thousand, and the Third Italian War of Independence. After the unification of Italy, he was twice a member of the City Council of Milan.” (Giuseppe Missori, Wikipedia)

Athena

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“Athena” by Johannes Benk
Dome of the Kunsthistorisches Museum
Maria-Theresien-Platz
Vienna, June 2018

“The Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History, also often referred to as the Museum of Fine Arts) is an art museum in Vienna, Austria. Housed in its festive palatial building on Ringstraße, it is crowned with an octagonal dome. The term Kunsthistorisches Museum applies to both the institution and the main building. It is the largest art museum in the country. It was opened around 1891 at the same time as the Natural History Museum, Vienna, by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary. The two museums have similar exteriors and face each other across Maria-Theresien-Platz. Both buildings were built between 1871 and 1891 according to plans drawn up by Gottfried Semper and Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer. The two Ringstraße museums were commissioned by the emperor in order to find a suitable shelter for the Habsburgs' formidable art collection and to make it accessible to the general public. The façade was built of sandstone. The building is rectangular in shape, and topped with a dome that is 60 meters high. The inside of the building is lavishly decorated with marble, stucco ornamentations, gold-leaf, and paintings.” (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wikipedia)