There are many who have either viewed in person, watched a program on, or read something about the Sistine Chapel, and in particular about Michelangelo’s ceiling. To stand beneath this recently restored masterpiece is an experience like no other but to delve into the history around, the personalities involved...
On the façade opposite the Palzzo della Ragione, Milan, the capital of a column in the second arch bears a little noticed Roman bas-relief depicting a scrofa semilanuta (long-haired sow). Legend has it that the founder of Milan was the Celt Bellovesus, who crossed the Alps and then came...
The Veiled Christ statue in the Sansevero chapel in Naples, carved from a single block of marble by the Neopolitan Giuseppe Sanmartino (1720-1793), is considered the great masterpiece of 18th-century European sculpture. However, did you know that there is a theory that this sculpture was created through a process which...
In the ancient heart of Naples. where almost 3,000 years of stratified history is frozen in time, part of Via dei Tribunali (the main east-west axis crossing the Graeco-Roman city) is closely associated with stories of witchcraft. Here (before it was swept away by the wave of modernisation...
Even if their names are not immediately associated with the history of clockmaking, certain great Florentine artists did play an important role in the history of time measurement. After all, they lived in a city which was the birthplace of various master clockmaker, who would make Florence one...
In Via Padre Cristoforo Chiantini, San Sano 53013 Gaiole in Chianti you will find a curious statue of a frog gulping down wine. Even more curiously, the statue owes its existence to a television programme. In the 1967 programme Tappabuchi, a word that might be translated as “stopgap”, the...
One of the many books I am re-reading at the moment is The Physiology of Taste by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826),a lawyer, who was mayor of Belley, France until he fled to the United States after the Revolution in 1793. On returning to France he was appointed a judge in Paris,...
If there is one legendary group of individuals in history who have inspired the imagination of many and have had grow around them myths, speculative theory, orthodox academic examination, and fiction, it must be the Knights Templar. Much has been written about them (including Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci...
Palazzo Penne, built in 1406 for Antonion Penne, the private secretary of King Ladislas of Anjou, is a rare example of the architecture of this period with its blend of Catalan (doorway) and Tuscan (façade bosses) elements. The renowned Antonio Baboccio was probably the designer. Penne’s influence at court was...
Standing on the steep main road that runs through the hills above Lucca, Tuscany, the town of San Gennaro is not far from Collodi (which provided the writer Carol Lorenzini, author of The Adventures of Pinnocchio, with his penname). Re-built in the 12th century, the church of San Gennaro...
Welcome to my love affair with the food, wine, history and culture of the Mediterranean, past and present. Here you will find not only recipes, drinks and fabulous products, but the history of the food and culture of the Mediterranean.
My purpose is to get you to explore and experience new tastes and along the way to immerse yourself in the wonderful history of this diverse and wonderful region – from Venice to Istanbul, Rome to Dubrovnik, Athens to Crete and all places in between and in the surrounds. Be prepared to be surprised, delighted and enthralled as you take this trip with me.
