On Princes Street in the center of Edinburgh there is a tall (200 feet 6 inches = 61.1 meters) monument to the Scottish author Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), with this statue at its base. Scott was the author of numerous books including the novel The Bride of Lammermoor, published in Read More …
The Hammering Man is a 21-meter metal statue by the American sculptor Jonathan Borofsky, located in front of the city entrance to the Frankfurt Trade Fair. When the statue was commissioned in 1990 it was intended as a symbol of Frankfurt’s industrious economy. But at some point in the early Read More …
The I. G. Farben building — seen here from the top of the Main Tower in 2004 — is one of the few large buildings in Frankfurt that was not bombed during the Second World War. Legend has it that General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the building spared so he Read More …
Recently I took a different route than usual on my daily social-distancing bicycle ride and ended up at the new Westend Campus of the Goethe University, where I hadn’t been for several years. (I studied at the old campus of the same university here in Frankfurt nearly half a century Read More …
This bronze statue of the playwright Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), the author of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, among other plays, is on display in Paris at the corner of Rue Saint-Antoine and the Rue des Tournelles, in the 4th arrondissement near Place de Read More …
If you ever have the duty of naming a new museum, you would be well advised to call it something else, rather than “The New Museum”, because 165 years later it might still (or again) be there and not be as new as it once was. The same goes for Read More …
In the Restoration period of the nineteenth century, every self-respecting European country had to have a King. So when Belgium declared its independence from the Netherlands in 1830, finding a King was the first order of business. There was no tradition of a Belgian royal family (in fact no tradition Read More …
Around 792 A.D. Charlemagne ordered the building of the Palatine Chapel on this site, and the rest of the cathedral was gradually built up around it. On Christmas Day of the year 800, Charlemagne was crowned “Emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III. This did not happen in Aachen, Read More …
No, this is not the kind of fountain where you throw in a coin and make a wish. It is a fountain which symbolizes ‘The Circulation of Money’ (in German ‘Der Kreislauf des Geldes). I suppose the message might be that money isn’t of much use unless it’s circulating. The Read More …
Since the bicycle wasn’t even invented until the 19th century, earlier people like Archbishop Absalon (about 1128 –1201) had to make do with horses. Absalon was a typical archbishop of his time, meaning that he traveled around with an army or navy, or both, and fought lots of battles — Read More …