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August 2012
The Roman Villa at Balácapuszta (Baláca, Nemesvámos, Hungary)
In the Roman province of Pannonia, most veterans who received donations of land settled down to a life of animal husbandry and crop-growing, living well, perhaps, but modestly. There was at least one villa, however, in the centre of a 20-acre estate, that had pretensions. It lay close to the…
The Bard of….Messina? Was Shakespeare Sicilian?
A few years ago, Martino Juvara, a retired schoolteacher from Ispica in the province of Ragusa, presented the theory that William Shakespeare had nothing to do with Stratford-upon-Avon but was in fact born in 1564 in Messina, Sicily, and given the name Guglielmo Crollalanza (’Falling Spear’). When still a boy,…
Rereading Ruskin
by Alta Macadam As I begin a revision of the Blue Guide Venice for a ninth edition to be published next year, my thoughts have turned to Ruskin and all he taught subsequent generations about the way to look at the city. I have always been fascinated by his detailed descriptions…
Sicily’s emblem: the Trinacria
The three-legged trinacria is an ancient symbol. Researches trace its origins to the Phoenician sun-god Baal, and also to the Greek Apollo: the legs signify the sun’s course through the skies and the three main seasons of the year. They are also taken to represent the triangular shape of Sicily,…
The Venice equivalent of the anonymous Tweet?
Anonymous tweets: essential for protest against oppressive regimes or the safe refuge of trolls and people who make trouble for fun? The Republic of Venice confronted this problem too, and they came up with the Bocca di Leone, or ‘lion’s mouth’, a hole-in-the-wall box where citizens could post denunciations of their…
The Tribuna of the Uffizi reopens
After some three years of closure for restoration and rearrangement, the exquisite little room known as the Tribuna in the Uffizi was reopened this summer. Alta Macadam (author of Blue Guide Florence) paid a visit. The Tribuna was built in 1581 by the architect and theatrical designer Bernardo Buontalenti, as a…
Luca Signorelli on exhibition in Umbria
Luca Signorelli (c.1441–1523) was born in Cortona, Tuscany, close to the Umbrian border. It is with Umbria that he is always associated, for his masterpiece in the cathedral of Orvieto and for the fact that the town of Città di Castello proclaimed him a citizen in 1488. This year his…
