By Adrian Arima and Jeff Richardson – The battle at Marathon between the Greeks and Persians was one of the most pivotal battles in history, basically enabling the continued birth and evolution of Western civilization. The Greek charge took the Persians by surprise, and, whether or not they outnumbered the […]
This lake exceeds anything I ever beheld in beauty. Shelley “When you write the story of two happy lovers, let the story be set on the banks of Lake Como.” Franz Liszt By Patrick Hunt – For millennia Lake Como in the foothills of the Italian Alps has offered so […]
By Hilary Letwin – Sitting for one’s portrait is not the first thing one might expect to do in self-isolation during a global pandemic. But, that is precisely where I found myself on a recent gray Tuesday morning, posed on my balcony in Vancouver at 9 am, my morning coffee […]
By Walter Borden, MD – Aeschylus speaks to me. Born in Eleusis, a village just north of Athens and the haunting grounds of the goddess Demeter, said to be the goddess of fertility and the harvest. To Aeschylus that was just a myth that masked her true identity– the goddess […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – Whether one likes dogs or not, the current exhibition Treue Freunde: Menschen und Hunde (“True Friends: Humans and Dogs”) at the Bayerische Nationalmuseum in Munich is a must-see. It charts the cultural history of the relationship between humans and dogs back to the earliest times when tame […]
by Patrizia Passerini – A green heart in the centre of the peninsula, like a treasure chest protected by valleys and hills that follow one another across long distances. Umbria is an Italian region that welcomes visitors with its beauty, rich landscapes and an ancient and amzing history. Once you […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – At the moment several exhibitions explore the many ways, in which the art and artists of the North influenced the production and style of particular works and collections as well as the direction of patronage. While the Duchy of Burgundy had played a major role in […]
By Patrizia Passerini – A land surrounded by woods and hills, composed of vineyards and lush fruit trees, overlooked by beautiful and imposing castles, embellished by ancient churches. It’s Roero, in the heart of the Piedmont wine region, in northern Italy. Roero is situated between Langhe and Monferrato, in the […]
By Andrea Gáldy – In sixteenth-century Florence, Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici succeeded his murdered predecessor Alessandro in 1537 and, even though the murderer was a close relative, knew very well what he needed to do to stay alive and in office. He had inherited a guard staffed by Italians […]
By Malia Maxwell – To read the poet Sappho (Archaic Greek, 7th-6th c. BCE) is to embrace painful incompletion. Little of her work remains, and what we do have left carries with it the stain of absence. While no amount of longing for a “completed” text can fill in her […]