Travel
The Gulf of Orosei: The Coastline Italy Forgot to Ruin
Thirty kilometres of Jurassic limestone dropping straight into the sea, no roads, no buildings, and beaches reachable only by boat or on...
Travel
The Magnalonga di Dorgali (Sardinia): Walking, Eating, and Reading a Landscape
A food-and-wine walk through the Supramonte: nine stops, centuries-old olive groves, prehistoric fairy houses carved into the rock, dozens of suckling pigs...
Travel
Gorropu Gorge (Sardinia): Italy’s Deepest Canyon, and How to Actually Tackle It
Walls over 500 metres high, a vanished seabed full of fossils, and a flower that grows almost nowhere else. Gorropu is one...
Travel
Asinara (Sardinia): The Island That Was a Prison, and So Stayed Intact
For over a century Asinara was a place of confinement: a leper hospital, a POW camp, the maximum-security prison that held Totò...
Food
Girotonno (Carloforte, Sardinia): a local tuna fair and a missed opportunity
A wasted opportunity dressed up as a festival. Carloforte sits on an extraordinary fish, a unique Ligurian-in-Sardinia history, and one of the...
Food
Breakfast in Bologna near the train station: Forno Brisa
Forno Brisa in Bologna, near the central train station: excellent viennoiserie, specialty coffee and a formidable marketing machine. An honest review between...
Art
Visiting the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence: Beyond Michelangelo’s David
To most visitors the Accademia is the David museum, and they devote ninety percent of their time to a single statue. That...
Art
Michelangelo’s Prigioni at the Galleria dell’Accademia: The Unfinished Slaves of an Impossible Tomb
Ninety-five per cent of visitors accelerate past the four half-carved giants to photograph the David, treating them as the appetiser before the...
Travel
The Valley of the Kings (Egypt): The Secret City of the Dead
Sixty-three tombs cut into the Theban rock. Seti I, Tutankhamun, the broken sarcophagus of Ramesses. The Valley of the Kings, reviewed without...
Travel
Saqqara: Where the Pyramid Was Born
Saqqara: where Egypt's pyramid story begins. Step Pyramid, tomb of Maya, Red Pyramid at Dahshur. History, visit tips, and blessed silence.