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October 2012
How the tide turned at the Milvian Bridge
Christianity did not conquer the Roman Empire with the sword—and yet it was with the sword that the groundwork was laid, at the Milvian Bridge. Today the place is peaceful: but this not particularly impressive-seeming footbridge over the Tiber was the scene, in late October of the year AD 312,…
A compelling reason to visit Trapani province
The expressive statue of a young man in a finely-pleated linen tunic, Il Giovane di Mozia, was found at Cappiddazzu on the northeast side of the island of Mozia (the ancient Phoenician Motya) in 1979. In the stance of a victor, with hand on hip, the pose of the statue expresses…
Visiting St Paul’s in London
News has just come in that the Occupy London protesters marked their first anniversary by chaining themselves to the pulpit of St Paul’s and reading out a ‘prayer’ criticizing St Paul’s for collusion in the world domination of big bad business. Cathedral staff, says londonist.com, were happy for the protesters to…
St Augustine and his mother at Ostia
An extract from Pilgrim’s Rome: A Blue Guide Travel Monograph. When you get off the train at Ostia Antica, you will do so together with a small huddle of visitors bound for the ruins of the ancient port city. Walk with them across the footbridge from the railway station, stick with…
Hadrian, Antinoüs and the Christian Fathers
Hadrian is one of the most interesting and enigmatic of all the pagan emperors. He was a man of contrasts, described in the Historia Augustaas: “in the same person austere and genial, dignified and playful, dilatory and quick to act, niggardly and generous, deceitful and straightforward, cruel and merciful, and always…
Can’t face the Vatican crowds? Try San Lorenzo
Rome has been in the Press quite a lot recently. News about the ban on snacking around ancient monuments in the city centre has spread like wildfire across the ether’s social media platforms. The despair of Vatican officials and their cluelessness about how to handle the Sistine Chapel’s five million…
Earliest-known image of a martyrdom
Under the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo on the Caelian Hill in Rome are the excavations known as the Case Romane (‘Roman houses’; www.caseromane.it). What has been revealed is complex and fascinating and spans at least five centuries. Traces of a wealthy domus with a nymphaeum, a street and…
Turin, Pisa and mathematics
What is the connection between the Mole Antonelliana, the great 19th-century landmark on the Turin skyline, and Leonardo da Pisa, born at the end of the 12th century and hailed as one of the greatest mathematicians the west has ever known? The Mole was begun in 1863 by the architect…
Ideal cities are all around us. It’s simply a matter of perspective.
Last time I bothered to update my mobile phone software, I found, included among the extra features, an option to take panorama shots with the phone’s camera. I experimented with this as I was walking to work, and came up with street views that instantly reminded me of Luciano Laurana.…
