Tracy Roberts and LoveItaly

Based in Rome, LoveItaly is now in its seventh year and its accent is decidedly American and not patrician. It owes everything to the dynamism of a Californian who is every bit as Roman as the Romans.…

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The Lost City of Norchia

Upper Palaeolithic flints, Eneolithic tombs, and remains of a Bronze Age semicircular hut, as well as a tomb with a Villanovan shield, show that the place evolved over time, before being bafflingly abandoned in the earlier Iron Age.…

Queen Adelaide’s castle in the Tuscan marches

Thanks to modern scientific analyses, the every-day circumstances of Tuscany’s Dark Age peoples are no longer mute. One thing is certain from this excavation: objects and nature played an active part in transforming the primitive experiences of Tuscany’s 9th-century peasants and their early feudal masters into some of the most…

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Sailing to Ithaca?

Is Ithaca, in fact, Odysseus’ island, where Penelope faithfully weaved, steadfastly waiting for her mischievous prince in their well-appointed palace?…

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Lascaux IV

As far as I could tell, every minor contour of the original has been replicated, as of course have the paintings themselves.…

Appointing Pompeii’s Director

Beyond the island I saw the thin campanile of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, which houses the Mouth of Truth, a bucket- list ‘must’ thanks to the incomparable Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday (1953).…

Travels to Malta

At the far end of Valletta, within the massive angular bulwarks of the fortress of St Elmo poking out at the entrance of the Grand Harbour, is a museum devoted to the town’s history and its struggle for survival.…

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A postcard from Athens

Athens conjures up ancient Greece and the civilisation symbolized by the fastidious re-building of the Parthenon. Yet Athens boasts possibly the most extensive remains of any Roman city in Greece. Why should this matter? Well, for the imperial Romans, Greece was a role model that they sought both to emulate…