On Saturday I went on a bicycle excursion to the Pidzamche neighborhood in Lviv and found this amazing very recently uncovered ghost sign! It must have been uncovered in the last month because it wasn’t visible when I was wandering around this neighborhood in May. Judging from the sign, in […]

In Annapolis the vast majority of anchor plates – or in this case I should use the term “masonry stars” – are star shaped. Many buildings from the city are from the eigteenth and nineteenth centuries and therefore there is a high concentration of them. And here is a lovely anchor-shaped anchor plate

Annapolis is chock-full of boot scrapers! Annapolis, Maryland, a historic city situated on the Chesapeake Bay, was founded in 1649. It has the highest concentration of 18th-century brick Georgian architecture in the United States and lots of period metal boot scrapers. One article reads, “Old brick and wood, working shutters on […]

The building at 3 Drukarska Street was built c. 1543, and was owned by Stanislaw Schtansl Scholtz. The building later become known as “Under the Mother of God” because of a statue of the Virgin Mary on the façade. In 1858 the building housed the St. Sophia Association of the […]

I read an interesting article in Ukrainian, in which the author uncovers the original purposes of the layout of an old Kozak village and the design of the houses. Below is my translation of most of it. The link to the original article and a few more photos can be […]

“When your government goes medieval on you, it’s time to get medieval back.” This post is about the medieval tactics, armour, and weaponry that were used during Ukraine’s recent revolution. For nearly 3 months Kyiv’s Independence Square (Maidan) was the revolution’s main battlefield, where the antigovernment protesters fought back the […]

My cousin took some very nice photos of several ghost signs in Montreal. As I don’t think I will make it to Montreal anytime soon, I will share his photos. Photos courtesy of Danylo Jaworsky

At first I thought these were guard stones, but then I realized their placement is not very typical for guard stones, which were placed at the corners of entranceways to protect the corners of the buildings from the wheels of carriages. Later I was told they are actually old cannon, […]

Two ads for PKO [Poland’s largest bank], likely from the 1970s. The first one is advetising bankboos.

In Lviv’s Passage Andreolli, which leads from 28 Rynok Square (built 1760s-1770s) to Teatralna Street, is a chain (handcuff or fetter) that once was in front of the City Hall. Women were chained to it by the arm or leg so that they would think about their behavior.