2017 is rapidly coming to an end. It's been quite an eventful year for me and I have done a lot of travelling. By my reckoning, over the course of the year I have visited 11 different countries and 37 unique destinations. As a way of looking back at 2017, here are 37 photos of... Continue Reading →
27 December marks the birthday of Field Marshal Mikhail Barclay de Tolly, commander-in-chief of the Russian armies during the first half of the 1812 war against Napoleon. Since he is one of my historical heroes, I have written at length about Barclay de Tolly's career and his activities in other places and there is little... Continue Reading →
23 December marks the birthday of one of Russia's most talented and enigmatic rulers, Tsar Alexander I. Born on this day in 1777, Alexander came to the throne at the young age of 24 following the assassination of his father, Tsar Paul I in 1801. Over the course of his reign, which lasted a quarter... Continue Reading →
16 December marks the birthday of Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, who was born on this day in 1742. A Prussian field marshal best known for his contribution to the Anglo-Prussian victory at the Battle of Waterloo, Blücher had a distinguished career and was the Prussian army's most charismatic commander. Referred to by his... Continue Reading →
Today I paid a visit to the Old English Court (Старый английский двор) in Moscow, located near Red Square in and adjacent to the new Zaryadye Park. This white brick building was given by Tsar Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) to merchants of the English Muscovy Company to carry their trade in Russia. This post... Continue Reading →
On 2 December 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had ruled France for five years as First Consul of the French Republic, was crowned Napoleon I, Emperor of the French. The proclamation of the First French Empire was a far cry from the republican ideals of the revolutionaries in 1789. By making himself emperor, Napoleon was seeking... Continue Reading →
On 25 November 1795, King Stanislaw II Augustus of Poland abdicated from his throne, and in the process the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania was wiped off the map of Europe. This was the Third of three partitions of Poland between Russia, Prussia, and Austria, which over the course of twenty years reduced a once mighty kingdom... Continue Reading →
In what now seems to be a series on royal palaces all over Europe, we now turn our attention to Portugal, the town of Sintra and its eclectic collection of palaces of almost every architectural style imaginable, sometimes within a single building. Like many such places around Europe, Sintra was intended by the Portuguese royal... Continue Reading →
In a recent post I wrote about Potsdam and the palaces built by successive generations of the Hohenzollern dynasty. Today I turn to the palaces of Eastern Europe. St Petersburg and its environs are well known for a plethora of palaces built for the Romanov family. Rather than giving a run down of all of... Continue Reading →
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia. Since I have already written an article about this at Europe & Me, due to time constraints I decided that instead of writing another article-length post on here, I would merely show some photos associated with the October Revolution which I accumulated over the... Continue Reading →
