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Culture Explorer Profile picture
@CultureExploreX
Sep 16, 2024 • 21 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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Wow, they actually made it better!

Here are 20 remarkable revivals proving that breathtaking architectural restoration is possible. 🧵 Frauenkirche Dresden - 1957 and 2024
1. Dresden (1983 and 2019) Image
2. Boston before and after the "Big Dig." They took the freeway and buried it underground. Credit: ©u/StrategyOdd7170 / Via reddit.com
3. In 2010, a new Beaux Arts building in New York City replaced a 1950s shop building. Credit: ©u/NewYorkvolunteer / Via reddit.com
4. Hereford Square, London (Before and After) Credit: @Culture_Crit
5. A mall in Budapest, Hungary (Before and After the fall of communist regime) Image
6. Warsaw, Poland (1945 and Now) Credit: @Dr_TheHistories
7. Chróstnik Palace 2009 vs. now. Chróstnik, Lubin County, Poland Credit: @tradingMaxiSL
8. Sometimes nature takes over the beauty that existed. Revealing it is a net positive.

Chichen Itza 1892 and 2020 Image
9. Sas-Bahu Temple, Gwalior, India (1869 vs 2019) Image
10. Warsaw, Poland (Then and Now) Image
11. Harlem, New York (Then and Now) Image
12. Berlin Kreuzberg (1985 and 2018) Credit: @ThenvsNowPic1
13. Kossuth square, Budapest (Then and Now) Credit: @Arch_Revival_
14. Dubai (1990 and 2021) Image
15. Ziggaurat of Ur (Before and after excavation) Image
16. Mahabulipuram (Then and Now) Credit: @GemsOfINDOLOGY ·
17. Remodeled health clinic in Csenger (before and after) Credit: @Michael_Diamant
18. Hiroshima (1945 to 2020) Credit: ©u/Adamstowellll / Via reddit.com
19. Walkways at Ohio State University were paved based on the student's desired paths. Image
20. Tsaritsyno Palace, Moscow, Russia (Before and after 2005) Credit: @Culture_Crit

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More from @CultureExploreX

Culture Explorer Profile picture
Sep 27
Civilizations don’t just fall.

They paint their decline on the walls before they vanish.

Art has always mirrored collapse in real time. Here’s the story... 🧵 In 1742 the great Venetian artist Giovanni Antonio Canal (1697-1768), better known as Canaletto, painted a series of five views of Rome's greatest monuments.
Rome left warnings in paint and stone.

Pompeii’s graffiti mocked leaders, cursed neighbors, and scrawled crude jokes.

“I’m amazed, wall, you haven’t collapsed under the weight of so many scribbles.”

When Vesuvius buried Pompeii, it froze satire in ash. CIL IV 10237. Gladiator Graffiti from the Nucerian Gate, Pompeii, depicting the names “Princeps” and “Hilarius”. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
CIL IV 8055. Graffiti depicting Gladiators, Pompeii. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain
Asellina’s Tavern Election Poster. Picture Credit: Marco Ebreo. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International. Wikimedia Commons
Rufus est (This is Rufus). Caricature from the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
By the 5th century, Roman art had shifted.

Gone were muscular gods and lively battles.
Instead: flat, rigid emperors, empty eyes, Christian symbols replacing myth.

The style mirrored an empire losing vitality. Late Roman mosaics at Villa Romana La Olmeda, Spain, 4th-5th centuries AD By Valdavia - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
Read 18 tweets
Culture Explorer Profile picture
Sep 19
Friday the 13th wasn’t always unlucky.

It became cursed the morning the most powerful knights in the world were dragged from their beds in chains.

This is the story of the Knights Templar — warrior monks who built empires, invented banking, and died in fire. 🧵 Image
Formed in 1119, the Templars began as nine knights sworn to protect Christian pilgrims on the dangerous roads to Jerusalem.

They lived atop the Temple Mount itself. Believed to be the site of Solomon’s Temple. That sacred address gave them instant mystique.
They were no ordinary knights.

Templars took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They lived like monks but fought like soldiers, a combination that shocked the medieval world. Image
Read 19 tweets
Culture Explorer Profile picture
Sep 17
Some restaurants serve food.
These places serve awe and beauty.

Here are 20 of the world’s most breathtaking dining experiences.

Which one would you choose for an Anniversary? 🧵 Kunsthistorisches Museum cafe
1. Le Train Bleu, Paris, France

A Belle Époque palace hidden in Gare de Lyon—frescoes, chandeliers, and royalty in spirit. Le Train Bleu, Paris, France - Travel through time with a meal inside this gilded Belle Époque treasure at Gare de Lyon. More of a restaurant but provides a cafe vibe. Credit: @WorldScholar_
2. Café New York, Budapest, Hungary (1894)

A café dressed as a palace—dripping gold, frescoes, and overwhelming grandeur.
Read 23 tweets
Culture Explorer Profile picture
Sep 13
Why do we stare at faces painted centuries ago?

Because portraits aren’t just about how someone looked. They show us who mattered. What power meant. What beauty was.

Here are 22 portraits that shaped how we see the world — and ourselves. 🧵 Portrait Of Lady Agnew Of Lochnaw by John Singer Sargent at the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh Year (completed): 1892
This isn’t just a pretty girl.

Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665) is quiet, almost plain.

But her gaze follows you. Her lips are parted. She’s thinking something.

We just don’t know what.
Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands Image
Not seductive. Not smiling.
But absolutely unforgettable.

John Singer Sargent’s Madame X (1884) shocked Paris.
He had to repaint the strap to stop the scandal.
She became the most famous woman nobody knew.

Met, NYC Image
Read 23 tweets
Culture Explorer Profile picture
Sep 12
In 2004, Navy Cmdr. David Fravor chased a white “Tic Tac” that dropped 50,000 feet in seconds, hovered, and darted off faster than a missile.

Radar and infrared confirmed it.

Physics can't explain it.

What if this sighting and others like it connect to visions in scripture? 🧵
Ezekiel, 6th century BC.

He described “wheels within wheels” of fire, full of eyes, rising and darting across the sky.

Scholars call it prophecy.

Yet the imagery—rotating forms, luminous movement—matches reports from pilots millennia later.

Were they both seeing the same reality?Ezekiel's Vision by Raphael, c. 1518 AD
Fatima, 1917.

Seventy thousand people in a Portuguese field claimed the sun spun, plunged, and threw rainbow colors across the sky.

Eyewitnesses included skeptics and reporters.

Miracle? Mass hallucination?

Or the same luminous disc phenomenon tracked today by pilots and radar?
Read 16 tweets
Culture Explorer Profile picture
Sep 11
9/11 didn’t just collapse towers, it collapsed belief.

In Institutions and In purpose.

24 years later, what’s rising in its place isn’t chaos.

It’s something more seductive and far more dangerous. 👇 9/11 Never Forget ... Credit: Hannah Funderburk
Historians William Strauss and Neil Howe called it The Saeculum — a four-phase cycle of human history:

• The High
• The Awakening
• The Unraveling
• The Crisis

We are now deep inside the last one. The Crisis. The Four Turnings of the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory
Every few generations, society hits a Fourth Turning, a total crisis that tears through its myths and rebuilds from the ashes.

• Revolution
• Civil war
• Depression
• Global war

Each cycle ends the same way: something must be reborn. Image
Read 15 tweets

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