分类： entertainment

Stunning new timelapse footage has captured the extraordinary transformation of one of Paris’s most historic bridges, as renowned street artist JR — often nicknamed the “French Banksy” for his subversive, large-scale public works — completed a breathtaking temporary installation that has captured the attention of art lovers across the globe.

The project, which reimagined the bridge’s iconic facade as a giant, inflating cave-like structure, unfolded over a period of careful preparation and construction. The timelapse sequence documents every stage of the work, from the initial anchoring of the massive flexible membrane to the gradual inflation that turned the solid stone bridge’s surface into a bulging, organic-looking form that seems to bulge out into the city space above the Seine.

JR, who built his career on provocative, site-specific public art that challenges how viewers interact with urban landscapes, has a long history of creating works that blur the line between art, architecture, and public space. This installation continues that tradition, turning a familiar Parisian landmark into something unexpected that forces passersby and visitors to reexamine the built environment they encounter every day.

Footage of the installation’s inflation has spread rapidly across social media, with thousands of users sharing the striking visual of the “giant cave” swelling against the backdrop of the Paris skyline. The temporary nature of the work — typical of JR’s public practice — means that only those who visited the site in person and those viewing the timelapse footage online can experience the full impact of the piece, adding an additional layer of exclusivity and urgency to its cultural conversation.

Critics and art observers have noted that the work continues JR’s signature style of taking well-known public spaces and injecting them with new meaning, using large-scale visual trickery to spark dialogue about art’s role in everyday life. Like the anonymous British street artist Banksy, JR works primarily in public space, avoiding traditional gallery settings to bring his art directly to the public, a practice that has earned him a global following and widespread critical acclaim.

A high-profile post-filming celebration attended by Rolling Stones frontman Sir Mick Jagger has been cut short by Italian law enforcement, after local officials enforced a longstanding rule prohibiting public music events on Wednesdays. The gathering marked the completion of principal photography for the upcoming feature film *Three Incestuous Sisters*, a star-studded project directed by award-nominated Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher, which has been filming on the tiny volcanic island of Stromboli, located off the northern coast of Sicily.

According to multiple Italian media reports, the event brought together Jagger, who has a key role in the film, and A-list cast members including Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Saoirse Ronan, and Josh O’Connor. The celebration was held at a local venue to honor the cast and crew’s months of work on location, when officers from Italy’s Carabinieri police force arrived to end the event. Local outlets note that music was played at a moderate volume through just one small speaker, yet the enforcement action still went ahead.

Reaction to the shutdown has sparked local political friction, with tourism leaders criticizing the move as unnecessarily harsh. Rosa Oliva, head of Stromboli’s local tourism office, labeled the police action an overreaching “punitive intervention” that harms the island’s already struggling hospitality sector. In comments to Italian news agency Ansa, Oliva argued that the film production represents a major economic boost for the small island, which has faced severe tourism declines and neglect over the past winter. She pointed out that instead of penalizing the gathering, local leaders should have welcomed the high-profile production that puts Stromboli back on the global travel map. “One would have expected a welcome to the guests, or at least a greeting and a thank you for their crucial contribution” to the local economy, Oliva said, referencing Riccardo Gullo, the mayor of Lipari, the administrative seat that governs Stromboli and the rest of the Aeolian Islands. Gullo’s administration introduced the Wednesday music ban that led to the shutdown, and the BBC has confirmed it has reached out to the mayor for comment on the incident. Guests at the party reportedly reacted to the police order with a mix of confusion and amusement, before complying with the request to end the music.

Beyond the viral party incident, *Three Incestuous Sisters* carries deep personal and cultural ties to Stromboli. Adapted from an American graphic novel of the same name, the film follows the quiet lives of three sisters whose isolated routine is upended by the arrival of a lighthouse keeper and his son. Jagger is set to play the lighthouse keeper, while O’Connor – best known for his lead roles in *The Crown* and *Challengers* – will portray his son. The cast also includes celebrated Italian-American actress Isabella Rossellini, whose connection to the island stretches back three-quarters of a century. In 1949, Rossellini’s parents – legendary director Roberto Rossellini and screen icon Ingrid Bergman – fell in love while filming the 1950 classic *Stromboli* on the very same island. Rossellini has previously shared on social media photos from her trip to Stromboli’s famous active volcano, noting she is working on the project “where my parents […] fell in love in 1949.” Rohrwacher, the film’s director, earned one of the film industry’s highest honors when she was nominated for the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, cementing *Three Incestuous Sisters* as one of the most anticipated upcoming releases in international cinema.

Over the past seven days, a series of diverse developments across global politics, public health, and sports have grabbed headlines, alongside a curated news quiz to test readers’ awareness of events beyond the biggest stories. This week, former U.S. President Donald Trump issued a public warning to Taiwan, cautioning against any moves toward a unilateral declaration of independence. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the ongoing Ebola outbreak has continued to take a devastating toll, with the cumulative death count climbing steadily as public health responders work to contain the spread of the virus. In a far lighter milestone for British sport, global icon Sir David Beckham made history by becoming the first professional athlete from the United Kingdom to amass a personal net worth exceeding $1 billion.

Beyond these three high-profile stories, the roundup challenges readers to reflect on how closely they have followed other global events that unfolded over the week. The collection of quiz questions has been put together by editor Ben Fell, who has curated the test to gauge readers’ knowledge of recent global happenings. For those eager to test their knowledge further, organizers point to additional resources: readers can access last week’s quiz for another round of testing, or explore a deep archive of past quizzes covering previous weeks’ events. This roundup is also categorized alongside broader coverage of pop culture, music, television, and the long-running annual Eurovision Song Contest.

Paris’ oldest surviving river crossing, the 400-year-old Pont Neuf, has begun disappearing from the city’s iconic Seine river skyline this week, as globally renowned street artist JR — often dubbed the “French Banksy” — rolls out one of the French capital’s most ambitious public art installations in modern history.

The project, years in the planning and more than 12 months in active development, entered its most dramatic phase this week after a weather-related delay pushed back the overnight inflation of the massive rocky structure. What started as a concept has now emerged as a startling prehistoric-looking cliff rising from the heart of central Paris, gradually swallowing the 17th-century stone bridge from view.

Titled *La Caverne du Pont Neuf* (The Cave of Pont Neuf), the monumental work pays direct homage to one of the most famous public art pieces in Paris’ history: the 1985 installation where legendary artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the entire Pont Neuf in shimmering golden fabric. That groundbreaking project helped redefine what large-scale public art could be in modern urban centers, and today a square adjacent to the bridge bears the pair’s names. JR acknowledges the weight of following in their footsteps, saying “It’s pretty hard to go after them.”

Funded through sales of JR’s original artwork and support from a small group of corporate partners, the installation will not open to the public until June 6, and will run around the clock through June 28. For the duration of the exhibition, the bridge will be closed to vehicle traffic, with the structure fully visible from the Seine quays, passing riverboats, and even the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower. Its run is timed to overlap with three major Paris cultural events: Paris Fashion Week, World Music Day, and the all-night contemporary arts festival Nuit Blanche.

The numbers behind the ephemeral artwork are staggering. The inflated cave stretches 120 meters along the bridge and rises 18 meters high — equal to the height of a six-story office building. Despite its massive size, the structure is constructed almost entirely of air: 80 hand-assembled fabric arches hold 20,000 cubic meters of air, bringing the total weight of the installation to just five metric tons. Each panel of the heavy-duty fabric was hand-stitched by 25 skilled artisans in a small village in Brittany, and the entire structure is designed to rest on the bridge without damaging its historic stonework. Engineers spent weeks testing the deflation process at an Orly Airport hangar to ensure that if power fails, the massive cave will deflate slowly and safely, with no risk to the landmark.

From the riverbanks, the installation appears as a solid rocky formation that disrupts Paris’ familiar cityscape — a deliberate choice, according to JR, who built his career creating large-scale photographic collages pasted on urban walls and landmarks across the globe. Unlike Christo’s wrapping, JR says his work does not cover the bridge, but “undresses” it, returning the bridge’s limestone blocks conceptually to the quarries that once supplied all the stone to build historic Paris. Beyond this geological nod, the artist also designed the cave to bring elements of raw nature back to the dense urban core.

The work also carries a sharp conceptual message rooted in Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave, where imprisoned people mistake shadows cast on a cave wall for actual reality. JR draws a direct parallel to modern digital life, arguing that today’s “caves” are the smartphones that people carry everywhere. “Because we believe that our algorithm on social media is the reality,” he explains. This creates a deliberate paradox: to fully engage with the installation’s hidden layers, visitors will pull out their phones anyway. Partnering with Snap, JR has added a custom augmented reality layer that reveals elements of the work invisible to the naked eye, and the audio design — a low, resonant hum evoking the weight of stone — comes from Thomas Bangalter, the former member of electronic music duo Daft Punk, who was 10 years old when Christo wrapped the Pont Neuf.

Once inside, visitors will be able to walk the full length of the cave for free, moving through a dark, daylit-free tunnel designed to make people lose track of time — a rare moment of pause on one of Paris’ busiest central bridges, a goal JR says he intentionally set out to achieve.

When the exhibition closes on June 28, the installation will be fully deflated, and all materials will be reused or recycled. True to JR’s ethos, this temporary work leaves no permanent trace on the historic bridge: unlike permanent construction, a massive structure built of air leaves behind no scar. Just as Christo’s golden wrapping left the bridge unchanged after two weeks in 1985, the Pont Neuf will re-emerge exactly as it was, ready to serve Parisians for another 400 years.

For nearly a quarter century, a striking black-and-white calendar showcasing close-up portraits of handsome young men in priestly collars has held its place as a quirky staple souvenir for visitors to Rome. But a recent bombshell report from leading Italian daily La Repubblica has pulled back the curtain on a decades-long open secret: the overwhelming majority of the men featured in the popular publication are not men of the cloth at all.

The face most closely associated with the calendar, officially titled *Calendario Romano*, belongs to Giovanni Galizia, a 39-year-old flight attendant for a Spanish airline who posed for his iconic cover shot at just 17 years old. Speaking to The Associated Press from his home in Verona earlier this week, Galizia recalled that the 1990s shoot in his native Palermo was nothing more than a casual joke arranged by mutual friends who connected him to the calendar’s creator, photographer Piero Pazzi. The enigmatic Mona Lisa-like smile that has graced countless covers for 23 of the calendar’s 26 years? It was just the awkward grin of a teenager embarrassed by his friends laughing off-camera at his costume.

“It was the smile of an embarrassed kid, because I saw all my friends in front of me laughing out loud because I was dressed like I was a priest,” Galizia explained. The one-off gig left no impact on his life until this week, when La Repubblica’s exposé turned the little-known secret into national news across Italy.

Pazzi, the photographer behind the project, is no stranger to quirky creative ventures: he has previously produced calendars of Venetian gondoliers and founded cat history museums in Budapest and Montenegro. His *Calendario Romano* relies heavily on recycled portraits year after year, with 12 total images featured per edition. Galizia told the AP he only knows one other model featured in the calendar, a French man who also has no ordination. Pazzi acknowledged that only around one-third of the models in the already-released 2027 edition are actual practicing priests, though he declined to share further details.

Both Galizia and Pazzi push back against widespread descriptions of the project as a “sexy priest calendar,” framing it instead as a deliberate artistic exploration of the tension between the sacred and the secular. Galizia argues that modern audiences too often conflate beauty with sensuality in an overly sexualized cultural landscape, noting that the project follows a long tradition of actors and models portraying clergy in film and television without deception. “Of course, it winks a bit at the dynamic between the sacred and the profane, because it is clear that seeing a world that is distant and in some ways so lofty as the ecclesiastical world, with such a fresh-faced young man, creates a kind of dissonance,” he said. Still, he adds, he takes the “sexy” label as a compliment: “because managing to be sexy in a priest’s collar is no small feat.”

The calendar has no official affiliation with the Vatican, which declined to comment for this story, and the project is produced entirely independent of the Holy See, though it does include a page of informational text about the Vatican for tourists. It retails for roughly 8 euros ($9.30) in souvenir shops clustered around Vatican City and Rome’s historic center, where one shop clerk told the AP it sells a handful of copies per day, with total annual sales estimated in the thousands. Pazzi collects royalties for the work, while Galizia — who signed a release form for his photo decades ago — has never sought or received payment for his repeatedly used portrait.

Surprisingly, the project has earned the casual approval of at least one working priest. Father Domenico, a South Korean priest visiting near the Vatican this week, told the AP the calendar is already well known among young people in his home country, who embrace it as lighthearted humor. “They often think priests are stiff and distant,” he explained. “But looking at this calendar, they think priests are more familiar, and priests can be funny. I think in Korea this calendar is very famous, and it is OK.”

For Galizia, the sudden national attention decades after his accidental modeling gig remains just another unexpected joke. The only time his connection to the calendar ever came up before this week was when his cousins gifted a copy to their grandmother, and the whole family spent the moment “dying laughing.” He has never even been recognized on the street for his most famous portrait — until now.