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...
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...
Art & Culture, History & Heritage, Rome, Tuscia Excursions
Italy has an extraordinary amount of antiquities that are simply abandoned; no ticket office, no maintenance, no security, just overgrown. Sometimes I come across a place purely by chance, sometimes I have been tipped off by a local, sometimes because I have read...
Architecture, Art & Culture, Freud and Orvieto, History & Heritage
St Patrick’s well is one of the sights of Orvieto. And one of the places we always visit. It’s dark so a tripod is handy. The life of an Italian prince in Renaissance Italy was pretty dangerous and no less so for the clerical prince known as the pope. In...
Art & Culture, History & Heritage, Jewish Heritage, Tuscia Excursions
In an out of the way corner of southern Tuscany, about 45 minutes from Orvieto, is a town perched on a volcanic ridge – one of the most evocative sights of Italy – Pitigliano Little Jerusalem as it is popularly known. George Dennis, the noted...
