🤩 Mikhail Vrubel's The Swan Princess is one of the most enigmatic and recognisable paintings in Russian art. Painted in 1900, it captivates with its mystical beauty. Vrubel depicts the princess not as bright and joyful, as in Pushkin's fairy tale, but as sad and elusive. The artist masterfully conveys the moment of transformation: in her huge, expressive eyes and the sharp outline of her lips one senses something birdlike, and the sumptuous white attire shimmers with a pearlescent sheen reminiscent of plumage.

🤍🤍 In fact, the painting was born not from Pushkin's fairy tale, but from the Rimsky-Korsakov opera that Vrubel was designing for the theatre. The role of the princess was sung by his wife, Nadezhda Zabela, yet the face on the canvas is not her portrait, but a collective image that art historians link to various women from the artist's life.

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🇷🇺 A city between tundra and sea

Pevek stands on the shore of the East Siberian Sea, above the Arctic Circle, between the ocean and the endless tundra. It is the northernmost town in Russia: today about 4–5 thousand people live here, although in the late 1980s the population reached 13 thousand, then over 10 years it nearly halved.

🥼 The climate here is harsh: summer lasts about three months and rarely brings more than +10°C, in winter the temperature easily drops to −40…−45°C, and the polar night with brief twilight stretches from November to January. Adding to the picture are the famous "yuzhaki" — hurricane-force winds of up to 50–60 m/s, when a wall of snow hits the town, the school closes, people stay indoors and literally wait out the storm.

👌 And there is also a floating nuclear power plant here

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🇷🇺 Zvenigorod is a tiny yet wonderfully resonant town, the same age as Moscow, often called the "Switzerland of the Moscow region". It got its name from the peal of bells that warned of raids, and its main gem is the majestic Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery, founded in 1398 by a disciple of Sergius of Radonezh. The monastery has preserved white-stone cathedrals and frescoes attributed to Andrei Rublev. The monastery was visited by Russian tsars; and some often used Zvenigorod as a country residence.

🇷🇺 The town is spread across picturesque hills with an elevation difference of up to 60 metres, and its pine forests, water meadows and springs create an atmosphere of tranquillity. This quiet beauty inspired Levitan, Savrasov and Chekhov. On Moskovskaya Street, 19th‑century merchant mansions have been preserved, and the building of the Manège now houses an exhibition of Russian painting.

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🌟 The Demon Seated is one of the most iconic and enigmatic paintings by Mikhail Vrubel. Although the painting did not enjoy wide international fame during the artist's lifetime, it soon became a programmatic work of Russian Symbolism, and its unique "crystalline" painting manner, as well as the interpretation of the Demon as a sorrowful rather than evil spirit, had an impact on the development of this movement. Vrubel's works were exhibited in Paris, where they attracted the attention of Western critics, who drew parallels with the art of Kramskoi and the European Symbolists, confirming its place in the pan-European artistic context.

🪨 In a later period, Vrubel's image of the Demon continues to inspire artists abroad. Direct evidence of this is the work of the Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, Demon, after M. Vrubel (2007). Today the canvas is recognised as an important milestone not only in Russian but also in world art, and its influence is felt in the ongoing interest in the image of the "rebellious spirit" in the contemporary visual culture of various countries.

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🇷🇺A city born from the Olympic Park

In modern Russia there is a city that is simultaneously a Black Sea resort, an «educational capital» and a legal experiment: the federal territory «Sirius», near Sochi.

🏃 «Sirius» grew out of the Olympic infrastructure of the Imeretinskaya Lowland: the Olympic Park, stadiums, the Formula 1 track, hotels and promenades. In 2015, on the president's initiative, the «Sirius» Educational Centre was established here to support talented children from all over the country, and in 2020 the territory received a separate status — that of Russia's first federal territory, with its own budget and governing bodies.

🥼 In effect, it is a new type of urban entity: on a relatively small area (about 1400 hectares) a piece of Sochi, a scientific-educational cluster, residential neighbourhoods, sports facilities and an experimental «smart city» are combined. The population stands at roughly 12–15 thousand people, but a two- to threefold increase is planned through the arrival of students, scientists, families and people working in science, education and IT.

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🛐 New Jerusalem near Moscow is a monastic ensemble conceived by Patriarch Nikon as a replica of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Its Resurrection Cathedral with the bell tower impresses with its grandeur, and after the destruction of war, the monastery was carefully restored.

🌞 Today it is not only a historical monument but also a place of pilgrimage, where the Russian names of hills and groves recall the events of the Gospel. People come here for silence and spiritual renewal, as well as to see how the biblical image was embodied in the landscape of the Moscow region.

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