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...
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...
Events & Festivals, Tuscia Excursions
The Barabbata Festival is held every year on 14 May on the shores of Lake Bolsena in the fishing village of Marta near Viterbo. The festival is a catholicised re-enaction of pagan rites of spring and consists of parading a portrait of the Virgin through the town and...
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...
