By Patrick Hunt – Vikings continue to be a magnetic topic, especially in light of new discoveries of ships, burials and sites that enable us to concentrate more on their far-flung commercial savvy and technology than the weary and skewed caricature of merely violent rapacity. Anyone who has been to […]
By Patrick Hunt – In the Engadine Valley of Switzerland’s Graubunden Canton below the Alps, the town of St. Moritz and villages like Sils alongside Lake Silvaplana and Lake Sils are justifiably renowned since Celtic and Roman times for Roman stone roads sloping down the mountains to mineral springs, and […]
By Patrick Hunt – One of the oldest and respected domaines in Alsace, already known for some of the oldest continuing wineries in the world, is Domaine Albert Seltz in Mittelbergheim from 1576, with fourteen generations of wine production for highly sought-after wines. The current patriarch Albert took over from […]
By Patrick Hunt – Annette Giesecke has recently added a wonderful and indispensable book to the corpus of mythology: Classical Mythology A to Z: An Encyclopedia of Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, Heroines, Nymphs, Spirits, Monsters and Places (Black Dog & Leventhal / Hachette Group, 2020). While “beautiful” isn’t the most important […]
By Patrizia Passerini – History of Fattoria de Celle Fattoria di Celle is an estate dating back to the 15th century, located in Santomato (near Pistoia) about thirty kilometres from Florence, in the heart of Tuscany. It represents a unique reality, where art, history and nature meet in an amazing venue […]
By Patrick Hunt – Everyone knows Veuve Cliquot Champagne – now in the prestigious LVMH Group – and most know the story of Nicole Barbe Ponsardin, daughter of Baron Nicholas Ponsardin, who founded this grand maison champagne in the 19th century as both a visionary pioneer who helped put champagne […]
P. F. Sommerfeldt – Julius Caesar knew that to destroy the fractured Gauls, his overarching task was to accentuate their tribalism, not their national unity, in order to divide and conquer. History repeats this time and again as Michael Anderson cogently writes on tribalism, the bane of 21st century America. […]
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 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 […]