In November 1831, publisher Charles Philipon was tried for a caricature of the king, and right in the courtroom, he transformed Louis-Philippe's face into a pear before the jury: if you ban the drawing, you'll have to ban the fruit too. The pear spread throughout Paris, and Honoré Daumier turned it into a weapon and went to prison for it. How a cheap lithograph led France to censorship and eventually ended up in a museum, read in the new article "The Royal Pear."

Lithography begins with a stone: the artist draws directly on smooth limestone, and thousands of prints are pulled from it. Honoré Daumier worked with such stones for thirty years, satirizing the July Monarchy. For "Gargantua," he was imprisoned in Sainte-Pélagie, and after "Rue Transnonain," the government bought up the prints and destroyed the stone itself. Ten of his sheets, from the pear-shaped Louis-Philippe to the Bonapartist scoundrel Ratapoil, demonstrate how a cheap newspaper image became both a weapon and an art form.

A series of exquisite etchings depicting Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian. Based on the biographies of Suetonius and inspired by the compositions of Antonio Tempesta, this work combines the precision of classical iconography with the expressive technique of early Baroque. Schiaminossi's engravings impress with their masterful use of chiaroscuro and attention to detail, conveying the grandeur, character, and symbolic power of the rulers of ancient Rome.

"In St. Petersburg, two types of architecture prevail: Greek and Roman," — this is how the capital of the Russian state was described by the prominent historian and local historian Ivan Ilyich Pushkaryov. The founder of the city, Emperor Peter, in an attempt to distance himself from the Moscow he disliked, which called itself the Third Rome, laid the foundation for a new ancient city on the northern shores of the Neva. Absorbing the entire "spirit" and longing for antiquity, St. Petersburg recreated it in the strict plans of its architectural ensembles, classical colonnades, and triumphal arches.

In 1797, the former Jesuit Abbot Barruel published four volumes in London and explained the French Revolution as a conspiracy of philosophers, masons, and Bavarian Illuminati. His interpretation of events is still read today. The trick is that some of his plots are confirmed by documents, while others he invented himself, and they sound equally convincing. Here are ten statements about lodges and the revolution. Separate truth from fiction and find out if you would have believed the abbot.

If the Russian fin de siècle had a face, it would be the year 1905. We know it by Bloody Sunday, the battleship Potemkin, and the October Manifesto. But this year was broader than its symbols: behind each familiar image lies another story, about people whom history preferred to forget, about the price that is not customary to count, and about memory that is difficult to distinguish from myth. Take the test and find out if you know the real 1905—or just its textbook portrait.

Ancient literature is the foundation of the entire European cultural tradition. It has given us heroic epics, tragedies and comedies, philosophical dialogues, and the first literary theories. This test will help you assess how well you know the works, authors, and key ideas of antiquity.

If you lived in the Age of Enlightenment, you would surely be debating freedom of speech, equality, and morality by candlelight in a Parisian salon. But whose ideas would you defend to the end? Take the test and find out who is hidden within you: the rebel Voltaire, the dreamer Rousseau, the jurist Montesquieu, or the strict judge of reason Kant.

The ideas of the Enlightenment always sparked heated debates, and many, while accepting certain elements of the era's worldview, decisively rejected others. Where is your limit of Enlightenment? Take the test and find out who you resemble more: the reactionary de Maistre, the conservative Burke, the religious philosopher Hamann, or the romantic nationalist Herder.