September 2014

  • Artwork of the Month: October. The Arch of Constantine

    Artwork of the Month: October. The Arch of Constantine

    October is the anniversary month of the fateful battle of the Milvian Bridge.

  • Sorting out the Uffizi

    Sorting out the Uffizi

    One has to admire the Uffizi Gallery’s directors, for managing to keep the museum open over the years it is taking to rearrange it into the ‘Grandi Uffizi’, making use of the space in the building on the first floor and at the same time rehanging some of the historic…

  • Waging war with a view

    Waging war with a view

    The Portofino peninsula today is a regional park, visited for its stunning views, the special flora and fauna and the microclimate, not to mention the extraordinary geology. It has been, however, for a much longer time a strategic outpost. On a clear winter day one has an unimpeded view stretching…

  • Dull London? Surely a mistake

    Dull London? Surely a mistake

    Dull? London? Says who? What happened to the spirit of Dr Johnson, to the tired-of-London-tired-of-life, almost jingoistic belief that home was best? Anyone who has read Paul Fussell’s brilliant Abroad: British Literary Traveling between the Wars, will know the answer. Nineteenth-century escapees, such as Browning, enthused in torrents over Italy…

  • Artwork of the month: September. Watercolour of the Great War

    Artwork of the month: September. Watercolour of the Great War

    The town of Gorizia stands on the Slovenian border in an expansion of the Isonzo valley, hemmed in by hills. It is a peaceful little town with public gardens and buildings in the Austrian style. After the fall of the independent counts of Gorizia in the 15th century, the city…

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