Cultural

The Vatican Library goes online and digitizes tens of thousands of manuscripts

The Vatican Apostolic Library, known as “VAT,” has grown a bit over the past five and a half centuries. Today it contains around 75,000 codices and 85,000 incunabula amid a total of over one million volumes. And in the case of increasingly many of these documents, you no longer have to make the journey to…

Jan 21, 2020Gheorghe Anghel

Monastic Pianist of Valaam Monastery plays music by Tchaikovsky

At the end of last year, Valaam Monastery posted a video with Monk Abel performing a part of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers. The video gathered over 7600 likes on Valaam Monastery’s Instagram account and was viewed more than 140,000 times on YouTube. The “Waltz of the Flowers” (1892) is a piece of orchestral music…

Jan 14, 2020Aurelian Iftimiu

Byzantine chant joins UNESCO list on intangible cultural heritage

UNESCO has inscribed Byzantine chant in Cyprus and Greece on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, In Cyprus reported. The decision was taken by the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage meeting in Bogota which inscribed one more element on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in…

Dec 12, 2019Sorin Ioniţe

Eugene Vodolazkin: Russia’s prize-winning novelist on main character: ‘Laurus brings together several lives of Saints’

Eugene Vodolazkin, one of today’s most famous Russian novelist, said that he was inspired by several lives of Saints when creating the main character of his best-selling novel Laurus. Eugene Vodolazkin and his wife Tatiana recently visited the Saint Nicholas –Tabacu church in Bucharest, the home of the Russian Orthodox Community in the capital of…

Nov 29, 2019Aurelian Iftimiu

Romanian Academy launches facsimile edition of 18th-century Romanian Byzantine Music Book

The Library of the Romanian Academy launched a facsimile transcription of the manuscripts written in 1713 by Filothei sin Agai Jipei, a renowned Romanian protopsaltes. Filothei sin Agai Jipei the Athonite was a church chanter close to Saint Anthimos the Iberian, Metropolitan of Wallachia, and had a major contribution to the adapting of the Byzantine…

Nov 26, 2019Aurelian Iftimiu

World’s first printed Christmas card goes on display at Dickens museum

The world’s first printed Christmas card, an artwork created in 1843 that went on to spawn a global industry, has gone on show at the Charles Dickens Museum in London. Designed by Henry Cole and illustrated by John Callcott Horsley, in the same year that Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published, the hand-coloured card shows a family…

Nov 25, 2019Gheorghe Anghel

Romfilatelia unveils 2019 Christmas stamps

Romfilatelia has launched its 2019 Christmas stamp collection which this year features brightly coloured traditional Nativity scenes. The Christmas set includes two denominated stamps indicating 1,70 lei reproducing images from the manuscript ‘Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God’ kept at the Romanian Academy Library. The scenes shown on the stamps are summarized by Romfilatelia…

Nov 19, 2019Aurelian Iftimiu

Romanian Academy to bring Berlin Wall segment to Bucharest

The “Ion I. C. Brătianu” Institute of Political Sciences and International Relations of the Romanian Academy (ISPRI) will bring a large piece of the Berlin Wall to Bucharest, local Agerpres reported. The segment will be placed in the courtyard of the Romanian Academy and will be unveiled at 10:00 AM on November 7. “30 years…

Nov 2, 2019Aurelian Iftimiu

Romfilatelia includes saintly ruler princes in new stamp issue entitled “Romanian rulers in painting”

Romfilatelia introduced in circulation on Friday, October 11, the postage stamps issue entitled “Romanian rulers in painting”, illustrating portraits of the Romanian rulers on canvas, including the portraits of Saints Constantine Brâncoveanu and Stephen the Great. The first postage stamps of the issue shows the portrait of St Constantine Brancoveanu, made by an anonymous painter…

Oct 11, 2019Aurelian Iftimiu

Ruins of 5,000-year-old city discovered in Israel

Archaeological excavations uncover vast Bronze Age city, one of the first and largest of the ancient Near East, as well as a temple. A vast city dating from 5,000 years ago was uncovered during extensive excavations by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) with the aid of approximately 5,000 Jewish and Arab teenagers and other volunteers…

Oct 8, 2019Mihail Mere-Albe

Romania’s Enescu Festival launches mobile app for 2019 edition

George Enescu International Festival and Samsung have launched Enescu Experience, a mobile app allowing users to discover the festival and its associate programs. The app can be downloaded for free from Google Play and the AppStore. It lists the program of the festival, and its other associated events held in unconventional venues, museums or open-air…

Sep 6, 2019Aurelian Iftimiu