The New York Times Company, owners of the International Herald-Tribune, announced they are going to kill off the 126-year-old newspaper. read more

The arms and flag of the Baltic city combine the usual strong characteristics of any design: simplicity and beauty. read more

This painting of St Patrick’s Church in Monaghan Town is one of the few fruits of art class from school days we’ve bothered preserving. read more

These two houses were built at the back of a lot on Ashley Avenue in Charleston. read more

Friends are continually sending me postcards from Rome. read more

A few photographic impressions from my jaunt to the Kaiserliche Hauptstadt. read more

In my limited (but slowly expanding) culinary experience, I have found haggis a rather useful addition to the repertoire. read more

Maties and Ikeys and Tuks, oh my! read more

The Church of St Nicholas of Tolentine dominates the busy intersection of University Avenue and West Fordham Road in the Bronx. read more

After Benedict XVI’s surprise, the Los Angeles Times asked me and ten other Catholics what they would like to see in the new pope. read more

The Irish, of course, have a long history of interaction with Mitteleuropa, and with Vienna in particular, from the earliest days. read more

Jack Carlson’s Humorous Guide to Heraldry is a welcome addition to the Cusackian library. read more

Italian heraldist Marco Foppoli releases his rendering of the new pope’s arms. read more

Please, warns Fr Julian Large, do not let your attitude to the Pope be determined by the media. read more

My article on Ernest Gimson’s design for the Australian capital is now available in Italian. read more

Roinnt oibre ag an Karl Uhlemann dearthóir. féach

If the E.U. is ever to succeed in settling upon a working model of democracy, Harold James argues scaling up small-country democracy is the way forward. read more

The daily programme of events for the twenty-first Gardone Riviera Summer Symposium organised by the Roman Forum has been released. read more

I happened to stumble upon the Order of Malta church in Vienna while meandering down the Kärntner Straße in the middle of a snowy day. read more

The municipal authorities have put these posters up all around Rome. click to view

Spiritual discourses, music and prayer in the tradition of St. Philip Neri, every Wednesday during Lent. read more

Praying for the Church during this transitional period. read more

In Transylvania, a “flag war” has broken out between Romanian politicians and the representatives of the Hungarian-speaking Szekler people. read more

Some photographs. read more

In the midst of some research the other day, I came across these photos of George VI on his first visit to Quebec as King in 1939. read more

Such has been the exodus from Facebook that I am forced to return to my previous practice of sharing random photographs here. read more

Just went to venerate the relics of Don Bosco, which are doing a UK-wide tour organised by the Salesian order. read more

The Metropolitan Museum is hosting an exhibition, Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens. read more

On Epiphany Eve, I went out to Hertfordshire, where I witnessed the tradition of a door being CMB’d for the new year. read more

This new year brings a new look at andrewcusack.com, one I hope is simpler, cleaner, a little more crisp. read more

Among the surprises in store at the Olympia antiques fair on Monday night were two works by the actress Grace Jones. read more

click to view

One of our favourite fellow cigarette-smokers has finally returned to the web following what we hope will be the last of her episodic periods of absence therefrom. read more

The nifty ‘Tumblr’ site Afrographique presents Africa-related facts and statistics in a visually appealing and accessible way. read more

Carl Laubin’s view of St Paul’s as it could have been reminded me of Marlow’s Venetian capriccio of the cathedral. read more

Before the location of the permanent UN headquarters was decided, the City of Quebec put forth a bid to host the international body. read more

A team of Exonians are cycling to Istanbul to raise money for Help for Heroes. read more

The clocktower on Victoria Street has disappeared for now, but will return. read more

All sensible right-minded people love the Phoenix and hate the Phoenix. It is a wonderful place, yet somehow attracts the very worst and most tiresome lot of humanity. read more

Only interesting, I’m afraid, to those reasonably acquainted with the situation of France in May 1958. read more

I’ve often thought that No. 6 Burlington Gardens is London’s closest answer to your typical nineteenth-century Teutonic university’s Hauptgebäude. read more

Charleston, the finest city of the American South, boasts two new alleyways designed by the architectural-urbanist partnership of George Holt and Andrew Gould. read more

Sunday’s address by Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin at the party’s annual Arbour Hill commemoration. read more

Nestled between Calton Hill and Salisbury Crags, the Palace of Holyroodhouse sits at the end of the Royal Mile that runs between it and Edinburgh Castle. read more

In the south transept of the Brompton Oratory is the altar dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, perhaps the finest altar in the entire church. read more

To commemorate the first decade of the Driehaus Prize, Carl Laubin was commissioned to produce a capriccio depicting the works of the first ten Driehaus laureates. read more

Some architectural projects are just so completely mental and insane that you actually have to doff your cap to the creativity of their inventors. Scipione Perosini’s ‘Projet d’un palais impérial à Rome’ is one such plan. read more

There is “another form of poverty,” the Pope told the assembled diplomatic corps, “which afflicts the so-called richer countries particularly seriously. … It is what my much-loved predecessor, Benedict XVI, called the ‘dictatorship of relativism’.” read more

If God is an Argentine then, apparently, the pope is a Peronist, writes Martin Gambarotta. At least that is how much of the local press has chosen to describe Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. read more

The Sacred College have elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, to be Rome’s new bishop and our Supreme Pontiff. He has chosen to take the name of Francis. read more

A new exhibition in Frankfurt seeks to highlight the vitality of the Neoclassical style and place it within a general artistic framework as a foundation for later Romanticism. read more

VIewing Vienna’s Hofburg from the Ringstraße, one senses a certain awkwardness: what is now the open Heldenplatz was conceived as part of a great imperial forum, the incomplete Kaiserforum. read more

In 1911, Australia held a competition to design its new capital city of Canberra. Chicago’s Walter Burley Griffin won, with a second prize for Finland’s Eliel Saarinen. But I would have chosen another design: Edward Gimson’s. read more

It was late summer. I hadn’t seen Nicholas in a while but he wasn’t particularly keen on travelling into London. “Why not meet in Winchester?” he suggested. read more

Gardaí estimate that 25,000 people gathered on the southern side of Merrion Square in Dublin to demonstrate opposition to government plans to liberalise Irish abortion laws. read more

A bill committee meeting in one of the richly decorated committee rooms of the Palace of Westminster. The Minister is standing, rattling on in an explanatory defence of his government’s bill. read more

Like many modern architects, Miguel Fisac began his career with more traditional works. His first commission was the Church of the Holy Spirit in Madrid, a fitting example of “the other modern”. read more

Disappointing news from Buenos Aires: in their hundredth year of service, all the original carriages on Linea A of the Subté are to be replaced. read more

One of the thorough-going irritations of New York is that, for all its glories, one can’t help but feel that the individual, the human being, is simply not the priority there. read more

Led by a provocative comedian, a gay atheist, and a socialist teacher, as many as a million protesters march in Paris against government plans to introduce same-sex civil marriage. read more

Christmas was marked by a return to the Abbey Basilica of Saint Gregory the Great at Downside for Midnight Mass. The abbey church always has a splendid feeling at night. read more

Most of the major American countries have large parliamentary buildings built at the height of their prosperity in the decade before and after 1900, but Mexico is a particular exception. read more