Money, jewels, treasures.

Full of mysteries and mysteries and the fate of the world's most famous diamond "Shah", because of which dozens of human lives were also ruined. It is 3 centimeters in size, clean and transparent, slightly yellowish from the surface, and weighs 88.7 carats. The diamond was found among the usual pebbles in the mines of Golconda more than 500 years ago. It has retained its natural shape, and only some of its facets have been polished. The Italian traveler Marco Polo wrote: "Nowhere in the world, only in this kingdom are their diamonds, there are many of them and all the good ones...

Yes, it is possible to destroy cities, even hundreds of cities, to burn thousands of books, to destroy museums, to destroy or steal works of art in them. But it is impossible to destroy the art and memory of the people. Alexander Nevskiy is one of the most worthy sons of Ancient Russia, famous for his piety and bravery in the battles, whose merits are great both before the Church and the Fatherland. The Holy Trinity Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg is named after the Cathedral Church of the Life-Giving Trinity and Saint Prince Alexander Nevsky, in whose honor and memory it was built...

A kind of Japanese art that is not found in other countries is a folk sculpture - Netsuke. According to their purpose, Netske played a very utilitarian role, served as a pendant, with the help of which the kimono belt was attached to the wallet, pouch, keys or a box for the storage of personal seals or drugs. The first Netsuke was very simple and inexpressive in shape, usually in the form of a decorative button or stick. But later on, the forms of Netsuke began to change and became more intricate and refined...

A large number of "decorated weapons" was made in 1824 - by the arrival in Zlatoust of Alexander I. Twelve artworks - swords and swords - were brought to the Russian tsar. Some of them were decorated with extremely complex drawings, filled with gilding. There was Napoleon's flight from Moscow, and the transition of Russian troops through the Berezina, and several battles of the Patriotic War of 1812. And on one of the sabers, there was a meeting of Alexander I in Zlatoust with the inscription: "To the Emperor happy Zlatoust"...

By the end of the XVIII century, Tula continued to maintain its leading position in the Russian arms industry, but in 1811 the idea arose to organize another arms center, which would "unload" Tula, taking over the production of a certain type of weapons. Because of the outbreak of the Patriotic War of 1812, this project had to be postponed and returned to it only after its completion. It was necessary to find a new center, which would be located in close proximity to the raw materials for the production of weapons, and, of course, it was necessary to provide it with qualified personnel...

One day Jacques-Joseph brought his younger brother with him, and since then he has been "sick" with Egypt. Later he confessed that already in the first visit to the house of J.B. Fourier he was seized by a passionate desire to decipher incomprehensible Egyptian characters. However, the eleven-year-old Jean-Francois Champollion understood the difficulty of setting a goal, and within a few years, he studied literally everything that was written over the past 2500 years about Egypt and the hieroglyphs...

In July 1799, during Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, a large black stone was dug out of the ground while digging trenches at the mouth of the Nile, not far from the city of Rosetta. The basalt slab, which was broken at the edges, was covered with incomprehensible writings. "The upper part of it was significantly broken off and contained fourteen lines of hieroglyphs, the figures of which are six lines in size from left to right, following the direction of our European languages rather than the one common to Oriental languages...

In the countries of Western Europe, stone-cutting art has passed a long way of development to the XVIII century, and many museums of the world possessed masterpieces of Ancient Egypt, classical antiquity and the Renaissance. In XVII-XVIII centuries the art of stone processing was famous for masters of Florence and Milan, France and Saxony, England and Sweden. And though in XVIII century the technique of processing of a color stone in Russia to has reached certain successes so that stone-cutting business...

Usually, the icon of the Annunciation is located on the Royal Gate, and under it are usually placed four evangelists, who were depicted with their symbols, and sometimes without them. All the sacred images that make up the necessary belonging of the Royal Gate, hay and columns are subject to the same idea: they all relate to the bloodless sacrifice that is made in the altar. On the royal gates of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour there were placed six sacred icons: the Annunciation of the Blessed...

The main place in the structure and decoration of Russian Orthodox churches is occupied by the iconostasis, which is a high wall stretching from the altar platform to the vault upwards and from the north side of the cathedral to the south. The iconostasis, set in several tiers of icons, separates the altar from the middle part of the temple. Initially, the Christian temples did not know the icons, but it was replaced by a simple grid in the case of ancient Christians. Both the ancient Byzantine...

For example, on the occasion of the bicentenary of the construction of St. Petar's, Fabergé made an egg "Peter the Great" for Easter 1903. The body of the egg is decorated with a gold ornament with small diamonds and rubies. On four miniatures on an ivory portrait of Peter I, Nikolay II, kinds of the Winter Palace and the House of Peter the Great are placed. In egg, the tiny replica of the well-known "Bronze horseman" frozen on a rock from a sapphire has settled down. The inner cover over the monument is covered with white enamel as if permeated by sunlight...

Products with the Carl Fabergé brand are admired by both inexperienced viewers and subtle connoisseurs and collectors. The company began its brilliant journey in 1842 when the well-known jeweler Gustav Faberge opened a small jewelry workshop in St. Petersburg on the Bolshoi Sea Street. At first, the modest workshop and work were carried out in accordance with its size. These were fashionable gold bracelets, brooches and medallions in the form of stones with buckles, more or less skillfully combined at the time...