Sputnik International Presents… Seven Unknown Wonders of the World

The Great Mosque of Djenné in Mali (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) is one of Africa’s most famous landmarks

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Great Mosque of Djenné

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Chand Baori is a stepwell in the village of Abhaneri in Rajasthan (India)

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As others look on, an Indian youth jumps into the historic Chand Baori stepwell

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Probably, the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest (Romania) is the largest civil administration building in the world

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The Alexandru Ioan Cuza Hall dwarfs foreign tourists… another name for this building is the “House of the People”

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The Stari Most (Old Bridge) is a 22-metre-high (72-foot-high) reconstruction of a 16th-century Ottoman bridge over the Neretva River in Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina… in 1993, Croatian forces destroyed the original bridge during the Croat-Bosniak War

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A diver leaps from the Stari Most in a traditional bridge diving competition

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Kumbhalgarh Fort, in the former princely state of Udaipur/Mewar (Rajahsthan (India))… its walls extend over 38 kilometres (23.7 miles), making them the second-longest continuous wall after the Great Wall of China

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Kumbhalgarh Fort

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Built in the early 17th-century, Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque in Isfahan (Iran) is one of the greatest architectural masterpieces of Safavid Iranian architecture

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Interior of the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque

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Derawar Fort, a massive square fortress in Bahawalpur in Pakistan… the fortress has 40 towering bastions; the circumference of its 30-metre-high (99-foot-high) walls is about 1.5 kilometres (0.94 mile)

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Derawar Fort

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Some man-made “wonders of the world”, such as the Colosseum or Taj Mahal, have much fame, but there are many more architectural masterpieces scattered across the globe that aren’t quite so famous.

27 February 2016

Sputnik International

https://sputniknews.com/photo/20160227/1035439233/hidden-world-wonders-photo.html

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20 September 2014. Our Great Russian Motherland… Morning Breaks in Moscow… It Ain’t Called the Centre for Nothin’

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Moscow… the Centre… the beating heart of Holy Rus wakes up…

My source didn’t say who the photographer was… damn…

BMD

Case Closed: Kremlin Sends Louis Vuitton Packing from Red Square

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On Wednesday, Moscow municipal authorities said that they’re dismantling a giant designer suitcase-shaped pavilion installed in the middle of Red Square, following a wave of public outrage and many demands for its removal. The city’s media and advertising department said that the sponsors of the Louis Vuitton-backed installation were preparing to take it down on Wednesday afternoon, after the Kremlin and the landmark GUM department store asked for the removal of their new neighbour. On Wednesday afternoon, GUM confirmed that work began to dismantle the titanic trunk. Measuring 30 metres (99 feet) long and nine metres (30 feet) high, and adorned with the Louis Vuitton logo, the oversized travel case was due to house a “Soul of Travel” exhibition organised by the famed French fashion house from 2 December to 19 January. Consisting of historical suitcases and video installations, the display was one of several events scheduled to commemorate GUM’s 120th anniversary.

However, public ire over the litigious luggage reached a fever pitch in recent days as people criticised the suitcase’s placement in Red Square… a UNESCO Heritage Site and the first port of call for most visitors to the Russian capital… as well as the display’s timing over the New Year holiday period. Lawmakers in the RF Gosduma, based just across the road from Red Square, complained that the “obscenity” denigrated the landmark, which they called a sacred symbol of Russian government. On Wednesday, a GUM spokesman said that the department store decided to send the suitcase packing after an overwhelmingly negative public reaction, and a Kremlin source told journalists that the presidential administration hadn’t agreed to the pavilion’s construction. Presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that the Kremlin issued no official orders to remove the pavilion. He said that there was nothing wrong with the suitcase, although he noted that those who designed it “obviously lacked a sense of proportion”. However, the lost luggage may yet find a new place to stay in the capital. Spokesmen from both Gorky Park (TsPKiO) and the all-Russia Exhibition Centre (VVTs), two of Moscow’s largest parks, told RIA-Novosti that they were ready to consider taking in the trunk, but that they haven’t yet received any requests to host the pavilion.

The fate of the “Soul of Travel” exhibition, a non-profit show to raise funds for supermodel Natalia Vodianova’s charity project, the Naked Heart Foundation, remains unclear. Vodianova, who founded the children’s charity in 2004, expressed hope that the exhibition wouldn’t face cancellation and that they could move the trunk to a new site. She wrote on her Facebook page, “If the exhibition doesn’t take place, not only will we be deprived of an exciting journey into history and beauty, but the charitable funds from ticket sales… which Louis Vuitton originally proposed to transfer to the Naked Heart Foundation… won’t be generated”. Louis Vuitton said that it planned to give the entire proceeds from the exhibition’s 200-rouble (6 USD. 6.40 CAD. 6.70 AUD. 4.50 Euros. 3.70 UK Pounds) admission charge to Vodianova’s charity. On Wednesday, repeated calls to the fashion house’s head office in London went unanswered.

27 November 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131127/185059988/French-Fashion-House-Asked-to-Remove-Giant-Trunk-from-Red-Square.html

 

21 June 2013. RIA-Novosti Infographics. Secrets of the Lenin Mausoleum

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The Lenin Mausoleum, located on Red Square in Moscow, is one of the high points of Soviet architecture. The supervising architect of the project was Aleksei Shchusev. The first temporary wooden mausoleum opened 27 January 1924 near the Senate Tower in the Kremlin on Red Square. The second mausoleum was a truncated step pyramid, with stairs joined on both sides of an L-shaped extension. The permanent stone mausoleum was ready in 1930. 22 April 2011 marks 141 years since the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) , statesman, politician, and Marxist theoretician, founder of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the USSR.

22 April 2011

RIA-Novosti

http://ria.ru/infografika/20110422/367068315.html

http://en.rian.ru/infographics/20110121/162235305.html

Editor’s Note:

I put this up, an infographic about a monument to a truly historical figure, because there are people in the ROCOR cosying up publicly to the specious pretender Maria Vladimirovna Romanova (her badmouthing of the late Grand Princess Xenia‘s family (who have a better claim than she does) is below the salt, to say the least). What’s worse, a bishop accepted a spurious “award” from this posturing poseur (see this disgusting post on the ROCOR official website). Like it or lump it, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was an historical figure, one of the “greats” in Russian history. You can’t airbrush him out of the story… yet, some would have it that way, and we should oppose them with all our powers. What happened, HAPPENED. Indeed, much GOOD happened because of the communists, and we should never deny it.

As I say, there’s a faction in the ROCOR (and in the OCA, too) that wants to prettify and refashion the past… and shitcan everything that doesn’t fit their current fancies. That’s unacceptable… full stop. I find that not only disrespectful to the historical record, it’s lunatic, in the medical sense of the term. It’s one of the reasons that I oppose Potapov and Paffhausen so bitterly… they want to remould the past to “excommunicate” all leftists and demonise those who oppose their capitalist notions. I’d remind these gents of the following… Christ became incarnate in the family of Joseph the Worker by CHOICE… think on THAT…

BMD