30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Other Artists Put Online by Norway’s National Museum of Art

NOR Skrik, ENG The Scream

Next time I make it to Oslo, the Nation­al Muse­um of Art, Archi­tec­ture and Design ranks high on my to-do list. The next time I make it to Oslo will also count as the first time I make it to Oslo, since the ten­den­cy of the city itself to rank high on the world’s-most-expen­sive places lists (and at the very top of some of those lists) has thus far scared me off of book­ing a flight there. But if you can han­dle Oslo’s for­mi­da­ble cost of liv­ing, the Nation­al Muse­um’s branch­es only charge you the equiv­a­lent of five bucks or so for admis­sion. And now they’ve offered an even cheap­er alter­na­tive: 30,000 works of art from their col­lec­tion, view­able online for free.

NOR Melankoli, ENG Melancholy

If it all seems over­whelm­ing, you can view the Nation­al Muse­um’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion in sec­tions of high­lights: one of pre-1945 works, one of post-1945 works, and one of Edvard Munch. While few of us could con­fi­dent­ly call our­selves experts in Nor­we­gian art, all of us know the work of Munch — or at least we know a work of Munch, 1893’s The Scream (Skrik), whose black-garbed cen­tral fig­ure, clutch­ing his gaunt fea­tures twist­ed into an expres­sion of pure agony, has gone on to inspire count­less homages, par­o­dies, and iron­ic greet­ing cards. But Munch, whose career last­ed well over half a cen­tu­ry and involved print­mak­ing as well as paint­ing, did­n’t become Nor­way’s best-known artist on the strength of The Scream alone.

NOR Pikene pĂĄ broen, ENG The Girls on the Bridge

The Nation­al Muse­um’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tion offers per­haps your best oppor­tu­ni­ty to begin to get a sense of the scope of Munch’s art. There you can take an up-close look at (and even down­load) such pieces as the less ago­nized Melan­choly (Melankoli), paint­ed one year before The Scream; 1901’s The Girls on the Bridge, a more placid treat­ment of a sim­i­lar set­ting; and even, so you can get to know the artist bet­ter still, Munch’s 1895 self-por­trait with a cig­a­rette. He may not exact­ly look hap­py in it, but at least he has­n’t become a visu­al short­hand for all-con­sum­ing pain like the poor fel­low he paint­ed on the bridge. (If you want my guess as to what made the sub­ject of The Scream so unhap­py, I’d say he just fin­ished look­ing into aver­age Oslo rents.)

NOR Selvportrett med sigarett, ENG Self-Portrait with Cigarette

A big thanks to Joakim for mak­ing us aware of this col­lec­tion. If any oth­er read­ers know of great resources we can fea­ture on the site, please send us a tip here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ing The Scream Ani­mat­ed to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

The Guggen­heim Puts Online 1600 Great Works of Mod­ern Art from 575 Artists

Down­load 35,000 Works of Art from the Nation­al Gallery, Includ­ing Mas­ter­pieces by Van Gogh, Gau­guin, Rem­brandt & More

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed!

Down­load 100,000 Free Art Images in High-Res­o­lu­tion from The Get­ty

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­maand the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Musician Plays Signature Drum Parts of 71 Beatles Songs in 5 Minutes: A Whirlwind Tribute to Ringo Starr

Kye Smith, a drum­mer based in New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia, recent­ly hauled his drum kit to a near­by rooftop (an homage to The Bea­t­les’ 1969 rooftop gig?) and start­ed bang­ing out a pret­ty won­der­ful trib­ute to Ringo Starr, play­ing drum parts from 71 Bea­t­les songs in 5 quick min­utes. Smith moves chrono­log­i­cal­ly, play­ing the songs in the order they were released (not record­ed). We start in 1962, move through 1969, and even momen­tar­i­ly vis­it 1995. On his Face­book page, Smith had this to say:

Way before I found out about punk rock or even knew what a snare drum was I spent my child­hood play­ing vinyl records at my grand­par­ents place spin­ning artists such as Slim Dusty, ELVIS PRESLEY and The Bea­t­les.

This chronol­o­gy called for some spe­cial treat­ment and got me out of the stu­dio and onto the rooftop of The Great North­ern Hotel — New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia for a pret­ty stun­ning view of New­cas­tle, New South Wales in the back­ground.

Thanks to every­one at The Great North­ern for let­ting me make some noise up there and to Elu­mi­nate for help­ing me shoot it and lug heaps of gear up 7 storeys of stairs!

Below the jump, you can find the list of songs that appear in the video, com­plete with cor­re­spond­ing time stamps. And keep in mind that Smith, as he men­tions on Youtube, is “avail­able for stu­dio and live work and will be open­ing up some slots for drum lessons short­ly.” Con­tact him here.

PS: If you can name one of the drum parts that was orig­i­nal­ly played by Paul McCart­ney, you get bonus points.

Fol­low Open Cul­ture on Face­book and Twit­ter and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

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Watch the Cult Classic Horror Film Carnival of Souls (1962)

carnival of souls

Herk Har­vey had a suc­cess­ful career as a direc­tor and pro­duc­er of edu­ca­tion­al and indus­tri­al movies in Lawrence, Kansas, but he longed for some­thing more. After all, fel­low Kansas film­mak­er Robert Alt­man had made the leap from indus­tri­al flicks to Hol­ly­wood, so why couldn’t he?

The result­ing movie, Car­ni­val of Souls (1962), became a cult clas­sic influ­enc­ing the likes of George Romero, James Wan and David Lynch. Mary (played by Can­dace Hilligoss, the only trained actor in the cast) mys­te­ri­ous­ly sur­faces after an ill-fat­ed drag race sends her car off a bridge and into a deep riv­er. Unmoored and unable to remem­ber what hap­pened, she flees her home­town and ends up in Salt Lake City where she takes a gig as a church organ­ist. She tries to make a life there but is plagued by an oth­er­world­ly stranger with a paper white mask of evil (played by Har­vey him­self.)

Now in the pub­lic domain, Car­ni­val is a slow burn of dread that relies on few cheap jumps and lit­tle gore. Instead, Har­vey cre­ates a sparse world of alien­ation and creep­ing hys­te­ria like an Edward Hop­per paint­ing gone psy­chot­ic. Harvey’s inspi­ra­tions were clear­ly more art house than Ham­mer hor­ror. Echoes of F. W. Mur­nau, Ing­mar Bergman and Jean Cocteau abound. Yet the curi­ous­ly som­nam­bu­late act­ing exhib­it­ed by most of the cast along with the movie’s freaky organ sound­track gives the film the vibe of a par­tic­u­lar­ly night­mar­ish Ed Wood movie.

Car­ni­val made a mod­est show­ing on the dri­ve-in cir­cuit when it came out but it didn’t become a cult clas­sic until lat­er in the 60s when it start­ed play­ing on late-night TV. Har­vey, how­ev­er, nev­er made anoth­er fea­ture.

You can watch the com­plete movie above, or find it in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Out­er Space: “The Worst Movie Ever Made,” “The Ulti­mate Cult Flick,” or Both?

The Cab­i­net of Dr. Cali­gari: See the Restored Ver­sion of the 1920 Hor­ror Clas­sic with Its Orig­i­nal Col­or Tint­ing

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films: Kubrick, Hitch­cock, Tourneur & More

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

The Artist as Artist’s Model: Au Naturel Portraits of Frida Kahlo Taken by Art Patron Julien Levy (1938)

Frida-2

Fri­da Kahlo’s lega­cy is def­i­nite­ly informed by her care­ful hus­bandry of own image. She under­stood its cur­ren­cy, and how to lever­age it. Even when caught out of uni­form or hav­ing a seem­ing­ly unaware laugh, she stayed true to what in mod­ern par­lance would be called her brand.

So it is with gallery own­er Julien Levy’s 1938 (tech­ni­cal­ly not-safe-for-work) pho­tographs of the artist, tak­en the year before he host­ed her first solo show, an event that caused Time mag­a­zine to rhap­sodize that “the flut­ter of the week in Man­hat­tan was caused by the first exhi­bi­tion of paint­ings by famed mural­ist Diego Rivera’s…wife, Fri­da Kahlo.”

Rivera’s wife was also Levy’s lover, as these art­ful­ly posed, semi-clad pho­tos sug­gest. They show a less pub­lic side of Kahlo, to be sure, but one that’s in keep­ing with the face she pre­sent­ed to the world.

Frankly, the rev­e­la­tion of her par­tial­ly loosed hair seems more inti­mate than her disha­bille.

Click here to see the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art’s col­lec­tion of Levy’s Kahlo por­traits, both with and with­out rebo­zo.

To learn a lit­tle more about Julien Levy (“a gallery own­er who com­mit­ted his charis­ma, con­nec­tions, and per­son­al resources to estab­lish­ing photography’s impor­tance in the field of mod­ern art”) and the col­lec­tion bequeathed to the Philadel­phia Muse­um of Art, click here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1933 Arti­cle on Fri­da Kahlo: “Wife of the Mas­ter Mur­al Painter Glee­ful­ly Dab­bles in Works of Art”

Fri­da Kahlo’s Col­or­ful Clothes Revealed for the First Time & Pho­tographed by Ishi­uchi Miyako

Fri­da Kahlo and Diego Rivera Vis­it Leon Trot­sky in Mex­i­co, 1938

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, is now play­ing in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Hear Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart” Read by the Great Bela Lugosi (1946)

A cou­ple days ago, we fea­tured some intrigu­ing clips from the new ani­mat­ed Edgar Allan Poe film, Extra­or­di­nary Tales. Direct­ed by ani­ma­tor Raul Gar­cia, the film draws on the voice tal­ents of sev­er­al clas­sic hor­ror actors and direc­tors, includ­ing the late Christo­pher Lee, Roger Cor­man, and—in an archival read­ing of Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart”—the leg­endary Bela Lugosi. You can hear his read­ing above, a record­ing that seems to date from 1946. The Hun­gar­i­an actor, who strug­gled to find work late in his career, and wres­tled with a mor­phine addic­tion, like­ly “record­ed it for his agent,” writes Ronald L. Smith, “who would have been dep­u­tized to make copies and send them out to any­one inter­est­ed in book­ing Bela’s solo stage act (which includ­ed an enact­ment of the Poe tale).”

All of the great hor­ror stars of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry cut their teeth on Poe, and per­formed his macabre sto­ries through­out their careers. Lugosi was no excep­tion. After his type­cast­ing as an exot­ic vil­lain in the stage adap­ta­tion of Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la in the late 20s, then in Tod Browning’s famous 1931 film, Lugosi would remark, “I am def­i­nite­ly typed, doomed to be an expo­nent of evil.”

He appeared the fol­low­ing year as the mad sci­en­tist in Universal’s adap­ta­tion of Poe’s Mur­ders in the Rue Morgue (watch here). Then, in 1935, Lugosi played yet anoth­er crazed doc­tor, who is obsessed with all things Poe, in The Raven (view here), a film that also fea­tures Universal’s oth­er major hor­ror star of the time, Boris Karloff. The two had teamed up the year pre­vi­ous in Edgar G. Ulmer’s Poe adap­ta­tion, The Black Cat, a huge hit for Uni­ver­sal, in which Lugosi plays yet anoth­er evil doc­tor.

After Lugosi’s suc­cess­es with Poe-inspired films in the thir­ties, his career pre­cip­i­tous­ly declined, and by the for­ties, when he made the “Tell Tale Heart” record­ing at the top of the post, he’d been reduced to play­ing par­o­dies of his Drac­u­la char­ac­ter, notably in 1948’s Abbott and Costel­lo Meet Franken­stein. Lugosi attempt­ed to bank on ear­li­er suc­cess­es with Poe, or Poe-like, char­ac­ters. Before Ed Wood found and res­ur­rect­ed him in now-clas­sic fifties B‑movies like Glen or Glen­da, Bride of the Mon­ster, and—posthumously—Plan 9 from Out­er Space, Lugosi made one final appear­ance onscreen in a Poe adap­ta­tion. Click here and see him in an adap­ta­tion of “The Cask of Amon­til­la­do,” an episode from tele­vi­sion series Sus­pense. Set in Italy dur­ing World War II, this ver­sion of “Amon­til­la­do” casts Lugosi as Nazi offi­cer “Gen­er­al For­tu­na­to,” whom one fan describes as a “ruth­less, amoral rouĂ©, with equal­ly ruth­less storm troop­ers at his beck and call.” It’s not Lugosi’s great­est per­for­mance, but it’s “Bela doing his 1949 best,” and an impor­tant entry in his cat­a­log of Poe per­for­mances, if only because it’s the last of them.

Hap­py Hal­loween!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Film Extra­or­di­nary Tales Ani­mates Edgar Poe Sto­ries, with Nar­ra­tions by Guiller­mo Del Toro, Christo­pher Lee & More

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

5 Hours of Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Vin­cent Price & Basil Rath­bone

Bela Lugosi Dis­cuss­es His Drug Habit as He Leaves the Hos­pi­tal in 1955

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Out­er Space: “The Worst Movie Ever Made,” “The Ulti­mate Cult Flick,” or Both?

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Stephen King Creates a List of 82 Books for Aspiring Writers (to Supplement an Earlier List of 96 Recommend Books)

Image by The USO, via Flickr Com­mons

Stephen King has giv­en writ­ers a lot to think about these past few years in his numer­ous inter­views and in his state­ment of craft, On Writ­ing. He deems one of his most salient pieces of advice on writ­ing so impor­tant that he repeats it twice in his Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers: writ­ers, he says, “learn best by read­ing a lot…. If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write.” To help his read­ers dis­cov­er the right tools, King attached a list of 96 books at the end of On Writ­ing, of which he said, “In some way or oth­er, I sus­pect each book in the list had an influ­ence on the books I wrote…. a good many of these might show you some new ways of doing your work.”

King’s orig­i­nal list of 96 books for aspir­ing writ­ers gen­er­at­ed a fair amount of com­ment on Aero­gramme Writer’s Stu­dio, who brought it to our atten­tion last year. Lat­er, the same web site brought us anoth­er list of 82 books, which King pub­lished in the 10th anniver­sary edi­tion of On Writ­ing. With King’s sec­ond list, as with the first, you’ll find that best-sell­ing genre writ­ers sit com­fort­ably next to lit-class sta­ples.

In this list, the spec­trum of acces­si­bil­i­ty is a lit­tle nar­row­er. We have few­er clas­sic writ­ers like Dick­ens or Con­rad and few­er com­mer­cial nov­el­ists like Nel­son DeMille. Instead the list is most­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry lit­er­ary fic­tion by most­ly liv­ing con­tem­po­raries, with lit­tle genre fic­tion save per­haps sci-fi/­fan­ta­sy writer Neal Stephenson’s Quick­sil­ver, thriller author Lee Child’s Jack Reach­er series, huge­ly pop­u­lar mys­tery writer Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Drag­on Tat­too, and Patrick O’Brian’s adven­ture series. Below, we’ve excerpt­ed a list of 15 books King recommends—books, he says, “which enter­tained and taught me.”

Kate Atkin­sonOne Good Turn
Mar­garet Atwood, Oryx and Crake
Robert Bolaño, 2666
Michael Chabon, The Yid­dish Policemen’s Union
Junot Diaz, The Brief Won­drous Life of Oscar Wao
Neil Gaiman, Amer­i­can Gods
Denis John­son, Tree of Smoke
Sue Monk Kid, The Secret Life of Bees
Elmore Leonard, Up in Honey’s Room
Cor­mac McCarthy, No Coun­try for Old Men
Jodi Picoult, Nine­teen Min­utes
Philip Roth, Amer­i­can Pas­toral
Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Chil­dren
Don­na Tartt, The Lit­tle Friend
Leo Tol­stoy, War and Peace 

King almost shrugs in his short intro­duc­tion, writ­ing, “you could do worse.” I expect many read­ers of this post might have sug­ges­tions for how they think you could also do bet­ter, espe­cial­ly giv­en the five years that have passed since this list’s com­pi­la­tion and some of the blind spots that seem to per­sist in King’s read­ing habits. I doubt he would object much to any of us adding to, or sub­tract­ing from, his lists—or ignor­ing them alto­geth­er. It seems clear he thinks that like him, we should read what we like, as long as we’re always read­ing some­thing. See the full list of 82 titles here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

7 Free Stephen King Sto­ries: Pre­sent­ed in Text, Audio, Web Com­ic & a Graph­ic Nov­el Video

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Watch “The Poetry of Perception”: Harvard Animates Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson & William Carlos Williams

Two years ago, a series of ani­mat­ed sci­ence videos began to pop up on a Vimeo account called Har­vardX Neu­ro­science. As its name sug­gests, it’s com­ing out of Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, and, with the help of ani­ma­tors, they orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed a series of sci­en­tif­ic shorts pitched between the lay­man and the seri­ous sci­en­tist. In the last month, how­ev­er, they’ve stepped fur­ther into the arts realm with a mini-series of ani­ma­tions (five and count­ing as of this writ­ing) that look to poet­ry to explain what sci­ence ren­ders dry and aca­d­e­m­ic.

The new video series fea­tures “rep­re­sen­ta­tions of per­cep­tion and sen­sa­tion” as real­ized through the poems of Walt Whit­man, America’s great tran­scen­den­tal­ist poet, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, and William Car­los Williams (whose own read­ing is used as the audio for a video). Open­ing all the sens­es to the won­ders of the world is “the ori­gin of all poems” accord­ing to Whit­man, and this cura­tion focus­es on smell, taste, sight, touch, and sound to prove his point.

The read­ers you hear in this videos, col­lec­tive­ly enti­tled Poet­ry of Per­cep­tion, include poet/artist Peter Bleg­vad, Anna Mar­tine, Harvard’s own Sarah Jes­sop, and artist/animator Nak Yong Choi. And the ani­ma­tions are brought to you by Sophie Koko Gate, Han­nah Jacobs, Lily Fang, Isaac Hol­land, Bri­an Smee, all who bring a tac­tile, muta­ble qual­i­ty to these short poems.

There will be anoth­er three videos in the series, so please book­mark the Vimeo account.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Walt Whitman’s Poem “A Noise­less Patient Spi­der” Brought to Life in Three Ani­ma­tions

William Car­los Williams Reads His Poet­ry (1954)

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe Reads Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1952)

The Sec­ond Known Pho­to of Emi­ly Dick­in­son Emerges

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Fly Through 17th-Century London’s Gritty Streets with Prize-Winning Animations

Crit­ics did not love 2004 film The Lib­er­tine, star­ring John­ny Depp as dis­solute 17th cen­tu­ry poet and court favorite John Wilmot, the sec­ond Earl of Rochester. The Guardian fault­ed its grim tone and his­tor­i­cal inac­cu­ra­cies and called it “grimy and pre­ten­tious.” I dis­agree with this take, but a fond­ness for Rochester (and for the peri­od in gen­er­al) bias­es me in the movie’s favor. Addi­tion­al­ly, as some admir­ing crit­ics point­ed out, dour script­ing aside, the film’s depic­tion of 17th cen­tu­ry Lon­don is indeed most con­vinc­ing. You can almost feel the muck that clings to every­thing, and smell the rank stench of body odor bare­ly cov­ered by per­fume. Writer Kather­ine Ashen­burg has called the 17th cen­tu­ry “prob­a­bly the dirt­i­est cen­tu­ry in West­ern his­to­ry” (Lon­don didn’t clean up for anoth­er cou­ple hun­dred years), and The Lib­er­tine takes pains to bring the period’s filth to vivid, stink­ing life.

Which brings us to anoth­er authen­tic recre­ation of 17th cen­tu­ry Lon­don, one we’ve fea­tured here before and that you can see again at the top of the post. Designed by six plucky stu­dents from De Mon­fort Uni­ver­si­ty, the three-minute CGI tour through the city’s sooty Tudor streets before The Great Fire of 1666 resem­bles a video game; but it also gives us a per­sua­sive sense of the city’s scale, lay­out, and, yes, it’s grim­i­ness. In our pre­vi­ous post, we quot­ed Lon­don­ist, who not­ed, “Although most of the build­ings are con­jec­tur­al, the stu­dents used a real­is­tic street pat­tern [tak­en from his­tor­i­cal maps] and even includ­ed the hang­ing signs of gen­uine inns and busi­ness­es.” Though its unsan­i­tary streets are emp­ty, one can eas­i­ly imag­ine walk­ing them in this prize-win­ning ani­ma­tion. Less invit­ing, how­ev­er, are those 17-cen­tu­ry Lon­don streets at night in anoth­er, eight-minute ani­ma­tion below, cre­at­ed by anoth­er De Mont­fort team called Tri­umphant Goat.

Bra­ziers and lanterns glow­er in dank alley­ways, a fore­bod­ing haze hangs in the night air, hand-drawn want­ed posters adorn the walls, and pools of mud­dy water col­lect among rough cob­ble­stones. Here, I can imag­ine John­ny Dep­p’s Rochester pick­ing his way along a dusky side street, head­ed for some clan­des­tine assig­na­tion with a sta­ble­boy or scullery maid. You can read about the mak­ing of this night­time scene here, where team mem­ber James Teeple dis­cuss­es the research meth­ods and tech­ni­cal objec­tives of the project, in terms that make it sound as though this is one lev­el of a video game, although it isn’t clear what the game is about. “We real­ly pushed the idea of this being a His­tor­i­cal recre­ation,” writes Teeple, “so that meant too much cre­ative license was a bad thing in our eyes.”

Final­ly, in the video below, we see a bright­ly-lit tour of St. Paul’s Cathe­dral, beau­ti­ful­ly ren­dered, if over­all a less pol­ished pre­sen­ta­tion than the two tours above. This ani­ma­tion was pre­sum­ably cre­at­ed by De Mont­fort design stu­dents as well, though there’s lit­tle infor­ma­tion on its Vimeo page. Though the city was sig­nif­i­cant­ly redesigned after the 1666 fire, in these first two ani­ma­tions espe­cial­ly, we get a sense of the city Samuel John­son described sev­en­ty years after that great con­fla­gra­tion as a place where “mal­ice, rap­ine, acci­dent, con­spire, / And now a rab­ble rages, now a fire.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Curi­ous Sto­ry of London’s First Cof­fee­hous­es (1650–1675)

A Drone’s Eye View of Los Ange­les, New York, Lon­don, Bangkok & Mex­i­co City

The Old­est Known Footage of Lon­don (1890–1920) Fea­tures the City’s Great Land­marks

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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