Big Picture

The farmer blockades show that Emmanuel Macron and the City of Light must put on a winning show this summer for a deeply divided country

A thawing ice rink, frosty relations between some competitors and a distinct lack of fans couldn’t stop the success of Chamonix 1924

The creator of the first totalitarian state died on January 24, 1924. His body was viewed by the faithful in temperatures of -35C

The continent became a safe haven in the postwar years for American musicians escaping racism and drugs. Decades on, they are still coming

The biggest and most dangerous surf in the world lies off Portugal, just 90 minutes north of Lisbon

Our diarist gives his personal rundown of who has been good – and who has been bad – over the last 12 months

Each new performance is a comment on his genius.. and his vile antisemitism

From the unmistakable face of The Pogues to an actor whose beauty often masked her brilliance, they summed up the defiance and the diversity of a continent

Colour photography pioneer Ernst Haas created a new iconography for the city by blurring the space between art and photojournalism

As Russia bombs Ukraine’s cultural sites, the powerful work in the capital’s Biennial is scattered across Europe

An anniversary year has featured as many scorching takedowns of Picasso’s character as it has paeans to his genius

Europeans have a long held fascination with volcanoes. But no one knows when or where the next potentially deadly eruption will occur

A walk in the footsteps of Philip Kerr’s fictional detective, who cracked cases and heads in Nazi-era and cold war Berlin

A new book by photographer Kevin Cummins captures the ghost of the Thin White Duke in the German city he once called home

As the death toll continues to mount, the Gaza war has the potential to destabilise the region – and the world

Images by the photographer in the city of Khan Yunis underline the suffering of ordinary Gazans

Why twisty French thriller Anatomy of a Fall is tipped to win the Best Picture Oscar

Conspiracy theory surrounds the 1978 kidnap and killing of the former Italian prime minister in the centre of Rome

There was much more to Tove Jansson than the troll family that made her famous

It was the Franco-British aircraft that flew too close to the sun. But could supersonic travel now make a surprise comeback?

A new translation of a novel on the rise of Nazism holds lessons for our current populist age

The pre-war German design school set the template for beautiful, functional modernism. Can an EU-backed revival match up?

The Vajont dam was hailed as an engineering miracle. Then, 60 years ago, it was the cause of one of Italy’s deadliest disasters

When Maria Callas met Pier Paolo Pasolini in the late 1960s, the results were predictably explosive

Thirty years on, the key to the enduring legacy of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Three Colours trilogy is creativity and love

How Frederick Forsyth’s bestselling thriller became the last word in political assassination cinema

Unsung Inglourious Basterds actor Denis Ménochet encounters more terror in the countryside in Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s The Beasts

The latest screen adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel has scooped four Oscars and seven Baftas

Cannes Best Actress winner Zar Amir Ebrahimi on her exile from Iran and why her work shames the regime

Lukas Dhont’s Close is an ecstatic, tear-jerking tale of adolescent friendship

How the jazz musician’s iconic soundtrack to Lift to the Scaffold still resonates today

Russia’s biggest airline is marking its centenary. But is there much to celebrate?