By Patrick Hunt – Hanging over narrow cobblestone streets, guild signs or emblems (zunftzeichen) left over from medieval tradition are eye-catching rewards appreciated in many old walking streets of mostly German-speaking regions of Europe, including Germany itself as well as Austria and eastern Switzerland and even Tyrolean Italy. This is especially […]
By Patrick Hunt – A “fish story” is often perceived as a tall tale, a narrative with “fishy” circumstances. If not an outright result of something incredible like “Jonah and the Whale”, a dubious stretching of the truth may be amusing but modern ichthyological science has somewhat tarnished the Egyptian […]
By Patrick Hunt – In Chretien de Troyes’ 12th century chivalric tale Erec and Enide, the young knight Erec engages in a battle of honor defending Queen Guinevere but is not known by his arrogant adversary Yeder, partly because he is unadorned and wearing borrowed armor without his heraldry […]
By Patrick Hunt – Every year for the past five years, after fieldwork in the Alps I come down to Torino (Turin) in August. Following Hannibal’s route, I come not to conquer the Taurini like Hannibal but instead to be conquered by Torino, so famous for its slow food – […]
By Patrick Hunt – Albrecht Durer is an artist famous for multiple endeavors, including woodcut and painting media. But he is also a pioneer illustrator of European star charts, especially his 1515 collaborative work for making a pair of woodcuts of the northern and southern hemisphere night sky images that […]
By Patrick Hunt- Several times in the past year, both in summer and spring, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting the national museum in Vaduz, the Liechtenstein LandesMuseum, currently celebrating 300 years of history through its collections. With my own current research on medieval castles and Celtic antecedents in the […]
By Patrick Hunt – Rembrandt van Rijn lived here in this imposing house on the old Breestraat near the heart of old Amsterdam from 1639-58. Now a museum (Rembrandthuis, “Rembrandt House”) along with the adjacent contemporary structure to the left, survival of this intact 17th c. house is due to Rembrandt’s […]
By Patrick Hunt – In the green Trastevere area of Rome on the Via della Lungara along the Tiber River, the Villa Farnesina is one of the Renaissance jewels of Rome, splendid with art and architecture from its inception between 1506-10. Its name has been associated with the Farnese Family […]
By Patrick Hunt – Tradition and some evidence have it that Charlemagne (768-814) revitalized the remnant Roman viticulture in his Frankish kingdom, especially in the northern Rhine region and also oversaw its viticultural progress. Alsace has been famous for wine since Roman colonists settled there; some also believe that the […]
by Patrick Hunt – When sailing wine dark seas is not an option, read Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s magical Il Professore e la Sirena to catch a glimmer of Sicily’s place in myth, preferably with a mesmerizing glass of Nero d’Avola looking south from Taormina to the curving bay […]