Searching for Samnites in the ‘Region of Little Cities’ Surprisingly few people have heard of Molise. Yet this is one of the most beautiful and the most historically engaging areas of Italy. Emerging from the road-tunnel that leads into the region, you get the impression you are entering a forgotten world – and in […]
Italy
Travel: Greek Temples of Sicily
Richard Hodges tours the island’s Greek temples. Sicily in February. Cheating winter with the smell of new grass and the first flowers and blossom, I promised two friends that in three days we would chase down the ancient Greeks and their Mediterranean setting. To get into the mood, I watched Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard. Now […]
Turin’s Egyptian Museum
Nadia Durrani and Andrew Selkirk visit Turin’s transformed Museo Egizio. When Turin’s Egyptian Museum (Museo Egizio) was opened in 1824, the hieroglyphic codecracker Jean-François Champollion declared that now ‘The path to Memphis and Thebes passes through Turin’. Yet, by the turn of the current millennium, few visited: its displays and facilities were outdated and cramped, […]
Marzamemi Shipwreck: Moving Christian Architecture for Justinian’s Empire
Justin Leidwanger and Sebastiano Tusa dive into a 6th-century puzzle off the coast of Sicily. In 1959, a local fisherman, searching for cuttlefish in the shallow waters off the coast of south-east Sicily, spotted several carved stone blocks nestled among the rocks, reef, and sand about a kilometre from the coastal port of Marzamemi. […]
An Etruscan puzzle: Investigating the monumental tomb of Grotte Scalina
This highly unusual Etruscan tomb is linked to the Macedonian court of Alexander the Great and, a millennium later, proved a magnet for medieval pilgrims. But does it have one last secret to reveal? Vincent Jolivet and Edwige Lovergne investigate. Tarquinia, about 100km north of Rome in the Lazio region of Italy, was one of […]
Travel: Pompeii
Lorenza Bacino explores an ancient city being restored by modern technology, taking a tour through Pompeii in the company of Professor Massimo Osanna, director of the Pompeii Project, and meeting some former inhabitants with forensic archaeologist Estelle Lazer. Walking along the cobbled roads, it is easy to imagine Pompeii as a thriving, bustling town in […]
Travel: Rome
CWA’s editor-in-chief Andrew Selkirk takes us on a capital tour. I have been to Rome – again! In March 2016, the city was the location for the annual conference of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies. The conference was held in one of Italy’s foremost universities, La Sapienza. This is Rome’s oldest – […]
Special Report: Preserving Italy’s Past
In the wake of Italy’s catastrophic earthquake, Tracy Roberts, vice-president of LoveItaly, considers the present and looks to the future. On 24 August, an earthquake roughly 100km north-east of Rome, with a magnitude of 6.2, devastated a string of mountain towns and villages in central Italy. With a death toll nearing 300, this is first […]
Sicily: Touring Persephone’s island
In the early morning, when the light is right, one can see Sicily from Gozo. Though Malta, Gozo, and Sicily share strong cultural connections, each has its own unique character. Sharon Sharpe concludes our Mediterranean jaunt with a tour of Persephone’s island. We fly into Catania, in the shadow of Mount Etna, on the east coast of […]
Sicilian splendours
Sicily, one of the world’s great crossroads of culture, is the subject of the British Museum’s latest must-see exhibition, Sicily: Culture and Conquest. Curators Dirk Booms and Peter Higgs take us behind the scenes, telling the story using five of their favourite objects from the displays. Sicily sits in the centre of the Mediterranean, its […]
Abruzzo & Molise: Oliver Gilkes goes in search of the Samnites
Late in the year the streets of modern Rome are visited by groups of strangely dressed men with soft felt hats and the impressive, not to say alarming, bagpipes (zampogna) traditionally associated with the shepherds of the Abruzzo and Molise. Made of the inflated skins of sheep, their thin, reedy sound accompanies the disparate groups […]
Richard Hodges travels to … The Island of Lampedusa, Italy
Flying south of Agrigento, the blue begins, even on All Saints’ Day. An Ionian light, it is the ravishing glory of the Middle Sea. I went to Lampedusa in the footsteps of Pope Francis and political grandees, conscious that this minuscule Italian outpost had borne a heavy burden as it grappled with the lives and accursed deaths of […]
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