16 rare wooden churches from the Carpathians

In 2013, the UNESCO selected sixteen historical Wooden Tserkvas (as these peculiar churches are called), as new world heritage sites. Eight are on Polish territory and other eight in Ukraine. Their architecture, cultural environment and features are unique compared to other remarkable wooden churches like Kizhi in Russia, or the ones in Southern Lesser Poland.

These tserkvas were built between the 16th and 19th centuries to serve the Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic faiths, and were made from the timber of the great forests which covered most lands in Europe at that time. The location of most of them in remote rural villages in the Carpathian Region, between Poland and Ukraine, helped them to survive centuries of plundering and fire.

You can find a map with the location of the 16 Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian Region at the end of the post:

The next 8 pictures, including this one from St. Michael the Archangel, Turzańsk (1803), are from Tserkvas located in Poland. Image by Hejma

Virgin Mary's Care Tserkva, Owczary. Built in 1653 and refurbished several times until it got this elegant look.
Image by Henryk Bielamowicz

Tserkva of the Birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Chotyniec, 1615, with the domes on octagonal drums.
Image by Paweł Mazurkiewicz

Inside St. James the Less Tserkva, Powroźnik. It existed since 1600, but from the original building is preserved only one part in the present church. Image by Mik Krakow

St. Michael the Archangel Tserkva, Smolnik. Rebuilt in 1791 after a Tartar invasion burned it down.
Image by Tomasz Bienias

The bell tower of the Tserkva of St. Paraskevia, Radruż, 16th century.
Image by Wlado

In this picture you can appreciate the size of the church of St. Michael the Archangel, Brunary, 17th century.
Image by Jerzy Strzelecki

Tserkva of St. Paraskevia, Kwiatoń (17th century), still in Poland.
Image by Pabbloz

We cross to the other side of the border; the next eight tservas are located in Ukraine. Holy Trinity Church, Zhovkva, 1720.
Image by Sergius Krinitchaya

Descent of the Holy Spirit Church, Potelych. Built in 1502, this is the oldest tserkva of the list.
Image by Ільницький Віталій

St. George's Church, Drohobych. Built in the second half of the 17th c., it looks like a medieval ship on dry land.
Image by Роман Тустановський

The Church of Ascension of Our Lord, Yasynia (1824), with its bell tower at the left.
Image by Elke Wetzig

The curious St. Dmytro's Church, Matkiv (1838). It features five sloping sections and helmet-shaped domes.

An old image from the Descent of the Holy Spirit Church, Rohatyn (beginning of the 16th century).
Image by Валерій Ящишин

The small but cute Church of St. Archangel Mykhailo, Uzhok, 1745.
Image by Elke Wetzig

The Church of the Nativity of B.V.M., Nyzhniy Verbizh (1808). With this metallic look, like a rocket ready for launch, it seems out of a Jules Verne novel or a comic of Tintin. Image by Тарас Возняк

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Olkhon Island and the frozen waters of lake Baikal

For five months at the year, the unique lake Baikal in West Siberia, Russia, it's sealed by an ice sheet up to a meter thick. To have an idea of its size and importance, Baikal is a massive natural water reservoir: it contains one fifth of all the water found in the lakes and rivers of our planet.

Also, this is a popular stop in the route of the Trans-Siberian Railway, near Irkutsk. What is not so popular, is to go there during the bastard-cold winter, and to bring back these amazing shots, as the photographer Marco Fieber did:

Imagine you having the chance of driving over a desert of frozen water, until an oasis of crystallized rock.

During the winter months, very few visitors arrive here to experience a tour over the shifting ice plates of Baikal.

The perspective changes completely, and you can have access to other parts of Olkhon Island, like these ice caves.

The around one meter thick ice cover, is hard enough to resist the weight of the vehicles until approximately March or April.

The ice below your feet can be transparent as if you were walking on water, or shiny like a silver mirror.

As a tourist you can join a tour, usually leaving from Irkutsk, that can last for a few days.

Olkhon Island is a perfect retreat to get away from civilization, almost hermit style.

This place is of great importance for the ancient Siberian shamanistic tradition, the common religion of the indigenous peoples of this land, the Buryats.

Travelling this regions in winter maybe a tricky adventure, as many services just don't work and everything slows down.

But once you get used to the cold, and after catching and almost permanent congestion, you may appreciate the fabulous charms of travelling off-season.

Sometimes is good to feel like you are almost the only tourist in town.

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The Monuments Men filming locations: where the Nazis kept the looted art

The Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program was established by the Allied armies in 1943 to help protect cultural property in war areas during World War II. According to Wikipedia, about 400 service members and civilians worked with military forces to safeguard historic and cultural monuments from war damage. Also they found and returned works of art and other items of cultural importance that had been stolen by the Nazis or hidden for protection.

Directed by George Clooney and starring a distinguished troop of celebrities, the movie was filmed in UK and Germany. This production brings to the big screen the decisive moments, when many of the major cultural and artistic artworks of our civilization were about to be lost forever.

We will visit the locations where The Monuments Men was filmed, and also we'll travel to some of the places that played an important role in this story, based in the book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History.

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15 extraordinary reflected wonders

Below we present some outstanding examples of reflection photography, a compendium of small artworks, some of them from extremely popular monuments and tourist attractions, that otherwise we wouldn't show in this web.

Throughout the time we have been collecting and keeping stunning images for this special post, from the four corners of the world. Compositions with one thing in common and an artistic twist thanks to water, mirrors and other reflecting surfaces:

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The enchanted garden in the jungle of Xilitla

This is the story of a surreal delirium, born from the will of an eccentric millionaire of other times. The attempt of a frustrated artist to raise, in an exuberant corner of the rain-forest in Mexico, what his creativity and wallet would enable him.

The result was a complex almost forgotten for the history of art, a sculptural fantasy straight out of the impossible Escher designs, the decaying remains of a lost civilization or the abandoned the sets of a science fiction film.

Las Pozas of Xilitla was the personal paradise of Edward James, a charismatic character straddling his beginnings as patron of artists such as Dalí and René Magritte, to the old shaman in a tropical retreat, playing to build his amazing dream:

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The legendary sound of the singing dunes of the Sahara

Like the sound of horns and tribal drums calling for war, sometimes the endless dunes of the Sahara emit a strange penetrating symphony that fills the air with low frequency vibrations.

The once mysterious phenomenon, documented centuries ago from Marco Polo to Charles Darwin, is produced by the upper layers of drier sand moving over the deepest ones. When a certain level of dryness is reached, the desert itself cries out, like an avalanche rumbling that echoes across miles of emptiness:

The video belongs to the fascinating series Africa from BBC, directed and narrated by the legendary David Attenborough. So far, this is probably the best footage of this eerie sound effect.

The intriguing sonic booms have been reported in other parts of the world, from Mongolia to the Atacama Desert in Chile. In addition, a recent scientific research could recreate their characteristic noise artificially in a laboratory, and confirmed that the pitch of the sound depends on the thickness of the sand grains. This way, each desert has its own musical record.

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Buzludzha, an abandoned communist UFO in Bulgaria

Who would think of building a giant circular pavilion with capacity for thousands of people at the top of a mountain range, over 1,400 meters high? The dreams of grandeur of the Soviets have left thousands of rare monuments scattered throughout the territories that one day formed the hermetic Eastern Bloc. Today we approach one of the most remarkable of them all: Buzludzha.

Something so unique has not stopped firing the imagination of the few visitors who come here. When the snow covers the peaks of the Balkan mountain range, this mass of concrete looks like a rebel base in the planet Hoth from the Empire Strikes Back. Also it could be the fortress of the bad guy of any 007 film.

The fact is that this relatively contemporary building (opened in 1981), seems to have its days numbered. The country could restore and use it as a tourist attraction. However, for now only illegal scarp dealers are interested in recovering the metallic framework, leaving the structure at the mercy of the elements:

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