We spend more than 90% of our time inside, so why do we design so many of our interiors like this?

Grey carpets, white walls, harsh lighting.

It's generic, boring, and genuinely bad for our physical and psychological health... Not all interiors look like this, but too many do, and more all the time.

Grey carpets, white walls, harsh lighting, neutral colours for details, everything plastic, shiny, and rectangular.

This has become the standard for new buildings (and refurbishments) around the world.

The world's most famous neoclassical buildings are kind of boring and generic when you actually look at them.

It's even hard to tell them apart: which one below is Versailles, or Buckingham Palace?

So here's why neoclassical architecture (although it's nice) is overrated: Buckingham Palace, despite being one of the world's most famous and visited buildings, is essentially quite boring and uninspiring from the outside.

There's a certain stateliness to it, but (like most big neoclassical buildings) it's really just a box wrapped in pilasters.

These aren't castles, palaces, or cathedrals.

They're all water towers, literally just bits of infrastructure relating to water management.

Is it worth the additional cost and resources to make things look like this... or is it a waste? These old water towers are an architectural subgenre of their own.

There are hundreds, mostly Neo-Gothic, and all add something wonderful to the skylines of their cities.

Like the one below in Bydgoszcz, Poland, from 1900.

But, most importantly, they're just infrastructure.

If one thing sums up the 21st century it's got to be all these default profile pictures.

You've seen them literally thousands of times, but they're completely generic and interchangeable.

Future historians will use them to symbolise our current era, and here's why... To understand what any society truly believed, and how they felt about humankind, you need to look at what they created rather than what they said.

Just as actions instead of words reveal who a person really is, art always tells you what a society was actually like.

This is St. Anne's Church in Vilnius, Lithuania.

It's over 500 years old and the perfect example of a strange architectural style known as "Brick Gothic".

But, more importantly, it's a lesson in how imagination can transform the way our world looks... Vilnius has one of the world's best-preserved Medieval old towns.

It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site, filled with winding streets and architectural gems from across the ages.

A testament to the wealth, grandeur, and sophistication of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Tell your friends! Your enemies! Your lovers!

The Spanish edition of my new book, El Tutor Cultural, is now available for pre-order.

It'll be released on 22 October — and you can get it at the link in my bio.

To celebrate, here are the 10 best things I've written about Spain: from why Barcelona looks the way it does to one of the world's most underrated modern architects, from the truth about Pablo Picasso to the origins of the Spanish football badge... What makes Barcelona such a beautiful city? It wasn't an accident — this is the story of how the modern, beloved Barcelona was consciously created:

https://x.com/culturaltutor/status/1650333346965192705

When Vincent van Gogh started painting he didn't use any bright colours — so what happened?

It isn't just about art.

This is a story about how we're all changed by the things we consume, the places we go, and the people we choose to spend time with... The year is 1881.

A 27 year old former teacher and missionary from the Netherlands called Vincent van Gogh decides to try and become a full-time artist, after being encouraged by his brother Theo.

What does he paint? The peasants of the countryside where his parents lived.

This painting is 101 years old.

It was made by George Bellows, one of America's greatest ever painters — and an artist who changed what art was all about... There have been many great American painters.

Like Frederic Edwin Church and the rest of the Hudson River School.

During the 19th century they painted colossal, almost photorealistic, luminescent views of the American landscape:

Napoleon died 204 years ago today.

He rose from obscurity, joined a revolution, became an emperor, tried to conquer Europe, failed, spent his last days in exile — and changed the world forever.

This is the life of Napoleon, told in 19 paintings: 1. Bonaparte at the Pont d'Arcole by Antoine-Jean Gros (1796)

Napoleon's life during the French Revolution was complicated, but by the age of 24 he was already a General.

Here, aged just 27, he led the armies of the French Republic to victory in Italy — his star was rising.

It took 8 architects, 21 popes, and 120 years to build and finish St Peter's Basilica in Rome.

And, four centuries later, it's still the largest church in the world.

So here's a brief introduction to St Peter's... The first impression anybody has when they see St Peter's Basilica in Rome, in real life or in a photo, is awe.

Because this is an immensely impressive building — it was and remains the world's largest church by volume.

Others are taller, but none are so vast.

The Sistine Chapel is one of the world's greatest buildings, and it has the most famous ceiling in history.

But what is it, who built it, and what does "Sistine" even mean?

Well, here's the surprisingly controversial history of the Sistine Chapel... Where did the Sistine Chapel get its name?

It was commissioned in 1473 by Pope Sixtus IV and completed nine years later.

His name in Italian was Sisto and the chapel was named after him, hence "Sistine" Chapel.

This is Burg Hohenzollern in Germany, one of the world's most beautiful Medieval castles.

Except that it isn't a Medieval castle — trains had been invented before it was built.

And so Hohenzollern is a perfect introduction to Neo-Gothic Architecture... If you want to understand Neo-Gothic Architecture then the best place to begin is with something like Hohenzollern.

It seems too good to be true — and that's because it is.

What you're looking at here isn't a Medieval castle; it's not even 200 years old.

This painting has no brush strokes — it is made from over 2,000,000 individual dots of colour.

And although it looks like nothing more than a sunny afternoon in Paris, it has a much darker hidden meaning... In the 1870s the Impressionists, led by Claude Monet, burst onto the French art scene.

Rather than painting classical themes in studios according to the principles of the Renaissance, as they had been taught in the Academy, the Impressionists took art outside...

This is the Queen's Stepwell in Gujarat, India, built nearly 1,000 years ago.

It's incredible, but it isn't unique — India is filled with hundreds of stepwells just like it.

Here is the story of the world's most extraordinary underground architecture... Water management was (and remains) one of the biggest challenges for any society.

When you have a large group of people living in one place you need to provide water for drinking, bathing, washing, irrigation, and more.

The only question is... how?

The Eiffel Tower was completed 136 years ago today.

It's now a global symbol of France and over 7 million tourists visit it every year.

But people hated the Eiffel Tower at first — they called it humiliating, modern, and "too American"... The Eiffel Tower was started in 1887 and finished two years later, on 31 March 1889.

This was an unprecedented structure and a challenge to engineering unlike anything attempted before.

Upon completion it was 300 metres tall and immediately became the world's tallest building.

These buildings, from around the world, look like they're either ancient or medieval.

But they were all built in the last few decades... The Ranganathaswamy Temple in Tiruchirappalli, India, has a history going back centuries.

But its tallest gopuram (a form of monumental gateway tower) was only completed in 1987.

You can see the older part at the bottom; its base is several hundred years old.

571 years ago today Amerigo Vespucci was born.

He's the guy the Americas are named after.

But it was basically an accident — and he didn't even know about it... As with the other continents, it isn't completely clear how the Americas got their name.

But the most widely accepted theory is that America was named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who travelled there twice in the late 1490s and early 1500s.

The Brutalist is about an architect who studied at the Bauhaus.

Its protagonist is fictional, but the Bauhaus was real.

What was it? The most influential design school in history.

So, from fonts to furniture, this is how Bauhaus created the aesthetic of the modern world... During the 19th century architecture, art, and design were all about the past.

This was the age of Revivalism — everything was built or designed in historical styles.

And it was also a maximalist age: decoration, detail, colour, and ornamentation were in fashion.

Mont-Saint-Michel in France is one of the most famous places in the world.

You've seen thousands of photos of it... but what is Mont-Saint-Michel? Who built it? And when?

This is a brief history of the world's strangest village... First — where is it?

Mont-Saint-Michel (which is the name of the island, the village, and the abbey) is a tidal island off the coast of Normandy, in northern France.

"Tidal" means that it is surrounded by sea or by land depending on the tides.

This unusual house in Turin was built 123 years ago.

It's the perfect example of a kind of architecture unique to Italy, known as the "Liberty Style".

How to make ordinary buildings more interesting? The Liberty Style has an answer... During the 1890s there was an artistic and architectural revolution in Europe: Art Nouveau.

It means "New Art" in French, and that's exactly what it was — a whole new approach to design, whether of buildings, furniture, clothes, sculpture, or crockery.

This painting is nearly 100 years old.

It's by Grant Wood (most famous for American Gothic) and it's called The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.

Why does it look like that? Because Grant Wood had one of the most unusual styles in art history... Grant Wood was born in 1891 in rural Iowa; ten years later the family moved to Cedar Rapids.

He worked at a metal shop, studied at arts and crafts schools in Minneapolis and Chicago, and then became a public school art teacher back in Cedar Rapids.

Humble beginnings.