Secret Monteverde
Beside the Doria Pamphlij park, off a busy road through Monteverde, lies a sacred bower. Here lies the barn-like 17th-century church of...
Forgotten Rome?
A glorious morning for a change and as luck would have it I had an appointment at the Villa Lante in the shadow of Garibaldi’s statue on...
Claudio - delivered by Amazon Prime?
An exhibition about the Emperor Claudius with a sub-title dedicated to his women is currently on at the Ara Pacis, Rome. I tend not to go...
AN EPIPHANY: FORUM (OF PEACE) WARE & ITALIAN HISTORY
I had an epiphany on Friday. I went to see the latest excavations in Rome’s Forum of Peace (the Forum of Vespasian) and a new discovery...
ROME’S SMALL THINGS FORGOTTEN II
Not so many walking routes taken you over Tiber Island. But once there you discover a hamlet on a minuscule footprint elevated high above...
ROME’S SMALL THINGS FORGOTTEN I
It is too easy to take Rome for granted. Huge monumental ruins dwarfing the smaller details soon become the stuff of living or visiting...
Dog poop depositories – a sign of things to come?
Fifty-three weeks since I was last on this old frontier line between Austria and Italy. Fort Mitterberg was constructed in the 1870s to...
Would Julius Caesar be weeping?
Last night I had the privilege to listen to Mary Beard thinking out loud about ‘What’s the point of Ancient Rome’. Her central argument...
The Battle of Monte Cassino project
The Second World War battle at Cassino occurred between December 1943 and May 1944. At times it involved over 30 different nationalities...
Eat, Pray and Love Rome: visit S. Crisogono
‘There's a power struggle going on across Europe these days. A few cities are competing against each other to see who shall emerge as the...
