History & Heritage, Nature & Outdoors, Tuscia Excursions
“Sunrise glowed red as I climbed along the gorge; when I reached the grove, I saw the altar slab all scattered with brightness, like the harper’s robe. I put down my load, and prayed to Apollo.” Poggio Conte will appear immediately familiar to anyone...
Architecture, Art & Culture, Nature & Outdoors, Tuscia Excursions
One of the interesting lost sites within an hour of Orvieto we made a Camera Etrusca excursion to the hermitage of Ripatonna. Much of what is now known as northern Latium north of Rome on the borders of Tuscany was until the 1930s a veritable wilderness. Saracen...
LOST SITES, Orvieto Ramblings, Rome, Tuscia Excursions
I have no idea why, but it was my dream as a child to find underground Roman ruins at the bottom of the garden. This dream was to come true when my wife and I moved to Castel Gandolfo in 2002. We rented a flat in the grounds of a villa once owned by Visconti, bought...
Art & Culture, History & Heritage, Tuscia Excursions
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap Each in his narrow cell for ever laid The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard (written in Stoke Poges) The drift...
Art & Culture, ETRUSCAN PLACES, History & Heritage, LOST SITES, Orvieto Ramblings, Photography Spots, Rome, Tuscia Excursions
Rome is known as the Eternal City and no city on earth has a comparable wealth of ancient ruins. The tireless documentor of Roman ruins Piranesi (1720-78) made a good living selling his topographical images to visitors on the Grand Tour. But whereas Canaletto used...
