What makes Russian literature unmatched?

It doesn’t escape pain.
It sits with it. Names it, breaks it open, redeems it.

Before War and Peace, Russian writers had already turned suffering into sacred text.

Let’s walk through it. Then we’ll get to Tolstoy. 🧵 Dostoevsky doesn’t flinch.

In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan demands justice from God.
A child is tortured. A murderer walks free.
There is no easy answer.

Faith isn’t comfort.
It’s a decision you make in the presence of unbearable truth.

They look alive.

But every one of these sculptures is made of stone.

18 masterpieces that shatter the line between reality and illusion.

You won’t believe they’re real. 🧵👇 1. Pietà – Michelangelo, 1499

She doesn’t weep.
She endures.

Michelangelo gave us a Madonna so full of sorrow, the marble itself seems to grieve.

If you lived during the Renaissance, you'd never call it a Golden Age.

Plague, political murder, censorship, and the Inquisition ruled the day.

Yet, behind the chaos was a cultural explosion.

Here’s the dark side of the Renaissance you were never taught: 🧵 Florence was the beating heart of the Renaissance.

But it wasn’t just a city of art, it was a ruthless power game.

Behind every fresco and statue was a family trying to control the future.

When I first read about Icarus, I thought it was a warning against arrogance.

But it’s not that simple.

He didn’t fall because he was proud.
He fell because he wanted more and reached for it.

That’s what Greek myths are about.
Not fantasy.
But hard truths. 🧵 The Greeks didn’t tell these stories to escape the world.
They told them to face it.

Why does love fall apart?
Why do the good suffer?
Why do we ruin what we build?

Here are 5 myths that don’t just survive, they still give our life meaning.

Castles matter because they weren’t built for comfort, they were built to control.

Walls were a warning. Gates told us who ruled.

To walk through one today isn’t escapism. It’s remembering how power worked.

Here are 20 castles in the UK that you should know. 🧵⤵️ 1. Edinburgh Castle – Scotland

In 1314, Thomas Randolph led a midnight raid, scaling the cliffs to recapture the castle.

A legendary moment in the fight for Scottish independence.

They were mocked, rejected, and told they misunderstood beauty.

But the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood didn’t care.

They painted anyway and what they left behind still haunts galleries today.

Here are their boldest works that dared match the Renaissance geniuses. 🧵 Boreas by Waterhouse (1903)

The wind takes everything. Especially innocence.

Private collection

They weren’t lost.
They were renamed, scattered, and quietly reabsorbed into history.

The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel didn’t vanish.
They became nations that rule the modern world — and most of us never realized it.

Here’s what they don’t teach you. 🧵👇 721 BC. Assyria destroys the northern Kingdom of Israel. Ten tribes are exiled to what is now Iran and Afghanistan.

The Bible says they were taken “beyond the River Gozan.”
That’s where most scholars stop.

But history doesn’t.

Most tourists never see this side of Italy.

Forget the crowds in Rome, Florence, or Venice.

These Italian towns are where it's soul lives and once you visit, you’ll never see the country the same way again... 🧵👇


Manarola

A Cinque Terre marvel.

Pastel houses stacked like Lego on cliffs.
Best explored with wine in hand.

War between Israel and Iran sounds like WWIII.

One man warned us 500 years ago: Nostradamus.

He named cities. Weapons. Events.

• 3 popes fall
• Rome destroyed
• Nuclear strikes
• Alien plagues
• A Middle Eastern man becomes the Antichrist

His prophecy...🧵👇 He foresaw three popes falling in rapid succession.

One assassinated while traveling.
Another manipulated by spies.
The final pope, physically deformed, would serve the Antichrist until he’s no longer useful.

(Centurie II, Quatrain 57)

Most people think they know Spain.
Beaches. Tapas. Flamenco.

But this country is built on layers of empire, genius, and stone.

And a basilica under construction longer than most nations have been in existence.

This is Spain like you’ve never seen it 🧵👇 1. Temple of the Sacred Heart, Barcelona (1961)

Perched on Mount Tibidabo.
A statue of Christ watches the city from above.

In 1915, dying men rose from the trenches, half-blind, choking on blood, and charged the German army.

It was so horrifying, Germans fled in panic.

At the heart of that charge was a 21-year-old officer.

This is the only portrait of him that exists and here is his story. 🧵👇 His name was Vladimir Kotlinsky.

The son of a schoolteacher, raised on duty and discipline.

In WWI, he was stationed at Osowiec Fortress, an old Russian outpost surrounded by German forces.

No one expected what happened next.

The world’s most stunning ceilings aren't just decoration.

They’re hidden masterpieces of art, math, and belief.

Here are some that will leave you speechless. What’s your favorite pick? 🧵👇 Sainte-Chapelle, Paris

The star-studded ceiling of this Gothic jewel glows over 15 stained-glass windows telling the Bible in radiant light.

Why are some American evangelicals cheering for war with Iran?

Not despite their faith but because of it.

To them, war isn’t tragedy.
It’s prophecy.
And Iran is cast as a villain in the story of the end times. 🧵👇 It all starts with a 2,500-year-old prophecy.

In Ezekiel 38, a mysterious figure named Gog leads an army from the north to attack Israel.

To millions of evangelicals, this is not symbolic.

They think it’s about to happen for real.

Lighthouses aren’t just structures.
They’re survival.
They’re defiance.
They’re the last thing standing when the world disappears into fog and storm.

Here are 24 that will shake you. 🧵👇 Bishop’s Rock – Isle of Scilly, UK

A mad idea turned real—this needle in the sea is the definition of stubborn brilliance.

Jerusalem is not just a city. It’s a living contradiction where prophets walked, empires fell, and every stone is a reminder of history.

But what most people think they know… barely scratches the surface.

Let’s peel back the layers of the world’s most fought-over city 🧵👇 Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, captured 44 times, and attacked 52 times.

Yet it still stands.

It’s the only city where three world religions claim the same hill sometimes with blood.

What if I told you there's a country with:
– More UNESCO sites than Egypt
– 15 neighboring nations
– Empires older than Rome

…yet the world reduces it to nukes and veils?

That country is Iran. And you’ve never really seen it. 🧵 Iran isn’t new. It’s older than the name “Persia.”

Ērān—the Land of the Aryans—was carved into stone 1,700 years ago.

But the world forgot.
Because “Persia” sounded like poetry.

And “Iran” became a threat.

They didn’t erase the past.
The Greeks and the Europeans renamed it Persia and hoped you’d never look deeper.

You probably think the apostles were saints with halos.

But the truth?
They were hunted men.
Outlaws. Revolutionaries who defied empires and were killed for it.

Here’s what really happened to them after Jesus was gone and why their stories still shake the world. 🧵 Peter was their leader. Bold, brash, loyal.

He denied Jesus three times. Broke down sobbing.

But then? He became fearless. Preached in the streets of Rome.

They crucified him upside down — because he didn’t think he was worthy to die like Jesus.

You think Europe is refined, orderly, predictable?
Then you haven’t been to Sicily.

Here, civilizations clashed. Greek temples, Norman castles, Baroque churches, Arab domes, Christian altars. The Godfather...

Let’s walk through the places that make Sicily unforgettable 🧵👇 Casa Professa, Palermo

Baroque without restraint.

Marble explodes across every surface, ceiling to floor, like the church itself couldn’t contain the faith inside it.

For decades, Iran has been reduced to headlines.

But behind the politics is a land of unimaginable beauty—palaces, poetry, sacred light, and stone cities older than Rome.

Let’s rediscover the real Iran through breathtaking places you’ll never forget 🧵👇 Vank Cathedral, Isfahan (1606)

Armenian resilience meets Persian detail. Inside: frescos, tilework, and a library that survived centuries.

Before Picasso broke forms and Duchamp mocked art...
A group of painters built entire worlds of beauty, myth, and silence.

They weren’t rebels.
They were the last idealists.

And when the world changed, it left them behind.
Their story deserves to be remembered. 🧵👇 Lawrence Alma-Tadema

He recreated ancient Rome with obsessive detail—temples, baths, and sunlit terraces.

His marble looked colder than real stone. His women, timeless.

At his peak, he was a celebrity.
By the 1920s? Virtually erased.

June 11, 323 BC: Alexander the Great dies suddenly in Babylon.

No wounds. No battle. Just a rising fever and silence.

Was it poison? A god’s curse. Or something more mundane that no one expected?

Here’s the real story behind history’s most haunting death. 🧵👇 The empire Alexander built stretched from Greece to India.

His generals fought over it for decades after his death.

Because he died without naming a clear successor.

And nobody knows why.