More than a decade ago I took a holiday on Naxos. This Cycladic island is a paradise for walkers and those who find pleasure in old high-walled mule tracks that connect miniature Byzantine churches. A German guidebook led me from village to village through this blessed landscape. One day, to escape this comforting world, I […]
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Travel: The Arch of Malborghetto, Italy
Why was a victory monument erected 20km from Rome? David J Breeze explores the extraordinary circumstances that led to an unsung triumphal arch at Malborghetto. For the last 30 years I have visited Rome roughly every other year, taking my sons and now my grandchildren to see this marvellous city, usually staying in the comfortable […]
Travel: Molise, Italy
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 […]
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 […]
Travel: St Pierre Cathedral
Hazel Blair explores ancient Celtic roots beneath early Christian Geneva. In the 21st century, Geneva is a lively hub of international politics and underground quantum research, but archaeologists should not feel out of place in this lakeside cosmopolis: if your passion for stratigraphy trumps your interest in the Higgs boson, Geneva has another secret subterranean […]
Travel: Thasos
With guidebook in hand, Martin Davies explores the untrammelled heritage of an idyllic Greek island. I first came across Thasos as a schoolboy reading Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: it was one of those exotic, magical names that sprinkle the Bard’s works and stir the imagination. Lying just off the coast of Macedonia in the Aegean, the island of […]
Travel: The Yucatán
Richard Hodges visits sites in the shadow of Chichén Itzá. Hotels, at their best, resemble oases in a desert. Mayaland – nestling in the shadow of Chichén Itzá, one of the New World’s Seven Wonders – is just such a place. Its civility and graciousness are rooted in the Carnegie expeditions to this Maya metropolis, […]
Travel: Tunisia with Mr. Mosaic
Richard Hodges looks at the life and work of renowned conservator Roberto Nardi, en route to the Bardo Museum. Speaking in Oslo’s City Hall after his election as winner of the EU and Europa Nostra prize for cultural heritage for 2015, Roberto Nardi explained that he was amazed to be paid for doing what […]
Travel: Las Eretas
Jules Stewart travels to the little-known site of an early Iron Age community in the Navarre region of northern Spain. Las Eretas was never meant to be on the beaten path. On the contrary, its inhabitants were determined to distance themselves as far as possible from hostile neighbours. Visitors should therefore not be discouraged by […]
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At their peak in the 4th century AD, the people who built Teotihuacan in Mexico ruled an empire every bit as impressive as that of Rome on the other side of the world. Yet we don’t even know their name, nor why they mysteriously abandoned their colossal capital city in the 7th century AD, some […]
Travel: Pyramids of the Peloponnese, Greece
Eric Cauchi investigates mysterious ancient remains that have puzzled travellers and scholars for millennia. Greece, birthplace of the Olympics and mythical home of the gods, is known for its spectacular temples, its exquisite Classical statues, and its jewel-like islands with sandy beaches. But pyramids? That’s Egypt, surely. Think again. In the eastern Peloponnese of southern […]
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 […]
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