Reminder: this is what subways look like in Russia.
The most beautiful subway stations around the world (thread): 🧵
1. Mayakovskaya, Moscow (1938)
2. Komsomolskaya, Moscow (1952)
Moscow's metro could easily fill an entire thread. Subways can and should have chandeliers and Baroque friezes.
3. City Hall Station, New York (1904)
America could have had a beautiful subway. This station, with stunning vaulted ceilings, tiled arches and skylights, was abandoned 40 years after opening.
4. Baker Street, London (1863)
The oldest underground station in the world, and almost completely unchanged for 160 years.
5. Toledo, Naples (2012)
One of the deepest stations on the Naples metro, with colors meant to evoke the depths of the ocean. Passengers reach platform level by passing beneath a "crater of light".
6. Elektrozavodskaya, Moscow (1944)
A station dedicated to the pioneers of electricity, with an innovative lighting system woven into neoclassical marble reliefs.
7. Arts et Métiers, Paris
An ode to steampunk science fiction and French novelist Jules Verne - copper cladding, portholes and exposed bolts.
8. Marienplatz, Munich (1971)
One of the most recognizable for its sheer simplicity - the work of German architect Alexander von Branca.
9. Alisher Navoi, Tashkent, Uzbekistan (1984)
The shimmering stations of Tashkent have only recently been revealed to the world after decades of photography bans. Arabic influence is obvious in the striking geometry and flower motifs.
10. Rådhuset, Stockholm (1975)
Organic architecture hewn into the bedrock below the city - the exposed walls make it look like a natural cave system.
Here's a breakdown of the 9 different types, and why they say when they appear:
"Be not afraid"...
"Angel" (from the Greek "angelos") just means messenger. We think of God's messengers as winged humanoids, but encounters in the Bible get far more interesting than that...
Theologians have spent centuries making sense of their various descriptions.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite identified 9 distinct types of angel, from the mostly-humanoid to the much more abstract.
Tom Bombadil is the most mysterious character in The Lord of the Rings.
He's the oldest being in Middle-earth and completely immune to the Ring's power — but why?
Bombadil is the key to the underlying ethics of the entire story, and to resisting evil yourself… 🧵
Tom Bombadil is an enigmatic, merry hermit of the countryside, known as "oldest and fatherless" by the Elves. He is truly ancient, and claims he was "here before the river and the trees."
He's so confounding that Peter Jackson left him out of the films entirely...
This is understandable, since he's unimportant to the development of the plot.
Tolkien, however, saw fit to include him anyway, because Tom reveals a lot about the underlying ethics of Middle-earth, and how to shield yourself from evil.