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Comments on Blue Guide Concise Rome
The first in the new Blue Guide Concise city series: small format and good value, ideal for on-site use. Blue Guide Concise Rome builds on Blue Guides’ exhaustive coverage of Italy and its cities. View the book’s contents, index and some sample pages, and buy securely from blueguides.com here »
A day trip from Venice up the Brenta Canal
The Brenta Canal was built to facilitate navigation between Venice and the city of Padua. Wealthy Venetians built magnificent villas along the banks of the canal – the “Riviera del Brenta” – to escape the heat of the lagoon in high summer. Being in Venice in July we too decided…
A day trip to Murano from Venice
A day trip to the island of Murano, famous for a thousand years for its production of glass. The island is about 20 mins from Venice itself. We took vaporetto #82 from the Giudecca, riding all the way round the bottom of the Bienale gardens and Arsenale, up the Fondamento Nuovo…
Pietrasanta, Pisa: in search of Stagi
Tomorrow we will get the train to Pisa and on to Pietrasanta, the birthplace of Stagio Stagi. Having based ourselves in Lucca (a fortunate choice), we spent today searching out works by Matteo Civitali, both in the town (his birth- and workplace) and out in the surrounding countryside. But tomorrow…
Ruskin on Venice
By Robert Hewison and published by Yale University Press, £45 Viewed from 160 years later it is not always easy to take Ruskin seriously: his romanticisation of the Gothic and demonisation of the Renaissance verges on the absurd, while curious relationships first with his beautiful and lively young wife – with whom…
Reading list for Florence and Tuscany
Taken from Blue Guide Tuscany, 5th edition (2009) FlorenceGene A. Brucker Renaissance Florence (Wiley, 1969). An excellent and very readable historical introduction.Margaret Haines (ed.) The Years of the Cupola 1417-1436. A fascinating digital archive of the sources of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, now available on line at www.operaduomo.firenze.it/cupola.Amanda…
Reading list for Venice
This reading list is taken from Blue Guide Venice, 8th edition (2007). And Blue Guide Literary Companion Venice (2009) is an anthology of writing about or set in Venice: The number of books that have been written about Venice is enormous. Ever since the first published descriptions of the city appeared…
Reading list for Rome
Unlike the Blue Guides to Florence and Venice, Blue Guide Rome does not include a list of recommended reading. Blue Guide Literary Companion Rome is due out Dec 2010, a sister volume to the Blue Guide Literary Companion Venice, to be joined by London in Spring 2011. In any case…
