For most of its life, the building at 2535 15th Street NW served its purpose with quiet precision: visas, trade meetings, small receptions that began at six and ended at eight. But that all changed on a humid afternoon in 2019, when, with little fanfare, the government of Ecuador allowed British police to enter its London embassy and arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The moment was decades in the making and the implications landed squarely in Washington, D.C., where the embassy became a front-row seat to the diplomatic fallout—a test of how much strain a century-old partnership could take.

Read The Embassy that Held its Breath on Diplomatica.

Since launching in September, Great Reads from Around the World has welcomed submissions from fifty embassies and cultural centers. We extend our deepest gratitude to all who have participated, and to the Embassy of Slovenia, whose additions this week helped us pass this remarkable milestone.

These fifty countries have nominated award-winning works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, graphic novels, podcasts, cookbooks, children’s books, a coloring book, and more, spanning a dizzying array of topics. You can view them all at Great Reads from Around the World.

The Diplomat Magazine’s managing editor Catherine Putz has also recommended excellent selections from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan, based on her experience reporting in and about these countries. This is in addition to the podcast the Embassy of Kazakhstan contributed early in the Great Reads program.

Our goal is to present a book from every country. If your country is not yet represented, please get in touch.

Did you know? You can support Diplomatica with any purchase on Bookshop.org, not just Great Reads, by shopping through our online store. Please bookmark our page and keep us in mind for all of your book purchases.

We’re pleased to welcome three outstanding students from William & Mary to the Diplomatica Global Media 2025 Summer Internship Cohort. Based on-site in Washington, DC, they will play a key role in advancing several of our core initiatives, including:

Meet our current interns, and get in touch for upcoming in-person and virtual internship opportunities for the fall and spring semesters.

In partnership with the Embassy of Poland, Polish filmmaker Marcin Modzelewski’s short film Lift Lady had its North American premiere at the DC/DOX Film Festival, along with four other short films in a collection entitled: “Or Forever Hold Your Peace.” 

Editorial Intern Shannon Raymond has the review.

The Washington, D.C., Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists held its annual Hall of Fame and Dateline Awards dinner at the National Press Club on Tuesday, June 10. Diplomatica Global Media won the All Divisions/Electronic, Blog/site category with three articles from last year.

The winning articles were:

Nest of Spies “The House Un-American Activities Committee produced last night documentary evidence and testimony under oath that the Polish Embassy here has been a nest of spies.”

So begins an article in The Washington Post on April 24, 1949, which detailed the documents provided to the U.S. government by General Izyador Rudolf Modelski, described as a “former embassy official whose appointment backfired on Poland’s Communist regime.”

The People’s Insurance Company “On a clear, sunny Saturday afternoon in October, I stood on the sidewalk to photograph the building. There is no fence surrounding it, and with the Swedish granite sparkling in the sun, I photographed it from several angles, as I have so many other buildings with interesting past lives before they became embassies. 

That single random act of sidewalk photography brought a Secret Service agent and two Metropolitan Police officers to my door eleven days later. Later that night, after they had left, I nearly collided with a man with a suit and vehicle too expensive for my modest apartment building, with shiny shoes and a lapel pin eerily similar to the insignia on the embassy, walking in my apartment's parking lot looking at vehicles. A man who Secret Service later told me, but never fully convinced me, was probably not foreign intelligence.”

The Tower Standing Watch Over 16th Street For more than one hundred years, a tower has stood watch over 16th street.

Affectionately named the “birdhouse” by the building’s residents, the tower room tops the Embassy of Lithuania at 2622 16th Street. Once part of a two-building structure, the embassy now stands alone, sandwiched between the Embassy of Cuba, and a large apartment complex that stands in the place of the original building and now dwarfs one of the longest-serving diplomatic properties in Washington.

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