When my friend made her suggestion over the phone, I tossed a few items into my travel bag, and was ready for my next island getaway in an instant. Greece’s gift to the world are its islands...
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My ancestors did not drink wine during the meal – they enjoyed it afterward! half-lying on their triclinia (ancient couches) they refrained from eating much because food was to stimulate the stomach, not burden it …
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On my most recent visit, I was delighted to see the restoration of the external frescoes on the Court of Honour and the Gallery of Hercules of the Palace. This beauty of the Italian Renaissance, by Genoese artists, shone in all its splendour....
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When I thought of Tuscany, the Renaissance bloomed inside of me, without a past or a present. Tuscany does not live cut off from its past. It is not Venice, Mantua or Ferrara, old republics and duchies that…
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It is a well-known fact that Jean Baptiste Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV, the Sun King, was a man of measure. He was the one who set the rules and regulations for the import and export of luxury items into and out of France and the first to come to the realization…
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Discipline and undiscipline danced a duet in her heart and, when her soul lay captive, there was always escape, something in her which the Emperor found difficult to tame. “We can always create an island just…
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The pioneer country of the Great Age of Exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries was Portugal, followed by Spain. So, one morning at the end of October I found myself in Lisbon, delighted by the narrative of a long-time friend…
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For Marguerite of Austria, it was not her own choice to travel. Her constant movements were her father’s decision, the Emperor Maximilian I of Habsburg. Showing great equanimity, the princess obeyed her father’s will…
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When I arrived in the first days of December, the wind was so strong that the street lamps swayed and the sea was swollen and wild. Valletta, the capital, seemed to be threatened by this storm, so violent…
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Indeed it was a meal at the Ducal Palace in Venice, where Maria Argyre had arrived as a newlywed, after her marriage to the Doge’s son had taken place in Constantinople in 1004…
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I spoke to him of Nûr Banû, the sultana whose name meant ‘lady of light’ and who was not a myth, but the daughter of the Venetian governor of Corfu. When Hayreddin Barbarossa invaded the island…
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I listened to Isabella carefully as she was telling me all this standing in front of Pauline’s Bonaparte, Princess Borghese, famous statue in the Borghese Gallery. She was depicted as Venus…
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Our being there was a happy conjuncture because we were not there to see the stones, dirt and scaffolding, assembled by the archaeologists but Augustus himself, walking through his home, sitting, writing...
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A volcanic explosion from the water's depths - and Delos was born into the heart of the Aegean. Or maybe it was that the waters subsided as one of the last geological phenomena of the area, and the island was finally revealed
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I suppose that Hydra suffered much from the pirate raids in the past, but the time finally arrived when the island evolved into a great nautical power, especially towards the end of the 18th century. Due to the good relations...
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And there, too, was Ulysses, weary from all the trials and tribulations he’ d endured. Poseidon’ s fury washed him up on a sandy beach of the very civilized Phaeacians, and Nausicaa sees him and is not repulsed by his nakedness and filth…
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“The ruins were found after just a few weeks' digging. He was lucky,” my Scotsman companion said, and I immediately thought he probably knew Evans' story better than that of the English kings. “He marvelled at…
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Why did Mehmet II, the conqueror of Constantinopole, not touch the Parthenon, and Morosini, the Venetian admiral, destroy it? The answer is that the Sultan had…
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