Tag: Europe

Corfu Old Town: Venetian Forts, Ionian Routes and European Layers

Corfu Old Town: Venetian Forts, Ionian Routes and European Layers Arrive in Corfu by sea, and the first thing you see is a fortress: a rocky headland crowned by two peaks, walled and bastioned, cut off from the town by a moat of sea water. Behind it rise tall, pastel-coloured houses with green shutters, bell […]

Thermopylae Battle: Landscape, Memory and the Story of Leonidas

Thermopylae Battle: Landscape, Memory and the Story of Leonidas Travellers driving south from Lamia towards Delphi today cross a broad, flat plain between mountains and the sea, cut through by a motorway, with the coast some way off to the east. It is hard to believe that this was once one of the narrowest and […]

Delos, Greece: Sacred Island, Trade Network and Archaeological City

Delos, Greece: Sacred Island, Trade Network and Archaeological City Half an hour by boat from the whitewashed lanes of Mykonos lies a low, dry, rocky island with almost no one living on it. Step ashore, and the ground is covered with ruins: temples, porticoes, markets, streets of houses with mosaic floors, a theatre, and a […]

Meteora Monasteries: Rock Landscapes, Orthodox Communities and Sacred Height

Meteora Monasteries: Rock Landscapes, Orthodox Communities and Sacred Height At the edge of the Thessalian plain, behind the town of Kalambaka, a cluster of grey rock towers rises abruptly from the valley floor, smooth-sided and streaked with dark weathering, as if they had been dropped there from the sky. On their summits sit monasteries: red-roofed […]

Oracle of Delphi: Consultation Ritual and the Sacred Landscape of Apollo

Oracle of Delphi: Consultation Ritual and the Sacred Landscape of Apollo For more than a thousand years, people climbed a steep mountainside in central Greece to put their questions to a god. Kings asked whether to go to war, cities asked where to found colonies, and private individuals asked about marriages, debts and journeys. The […]

Mystras, Greece: Byzantine City on a Spartan Hillside

Mystras, Greece: Byzantine City on a Spartan Hillside About eight kilometres from modern Sparta, a steep spur of the Taygetos mountains is covered from foot to summit with the ruins of a medieval city: domed churches, monastery walls, houses, gates and, near the top, a great palace, all crowned by a castle. This is Mystras, […]

Palace of Nestor: Mycenaean Pylos and the Archaeology of a Bronze Age Kingdom

Palace of Nestor: Mycenaean Pylos and the Archaeology of a Bronze Age Kingdom On a low hill among olive groves in the south-west Peloponnese, under a long modern roof, lie the remains of a Bronze Age palace that has told archaeologists more about how a Mycenaean kingdom actually worked than any other site in Greece. […]

Mycenae Archaeological Site: Lion Gate, Tombs and Bronze Age Power

Mycenae Archaeological Site: Lion Gate, Tombs and Bronze Age Power Mycenae sits on a low, rocky hill in the north-eastern Peloponnese, tucked between two higher peaks and looking out over the plain of Argos towards the sea. From a distance the ruins are easy to miss. Up close, the Mycenae archaeological site is overwhelming: walls […]

Diros Caves: Water Caves and Prehistoric Landscapes of the Mani

Diros Caves: Water Caves and Prehistoric Landscapes of the Mani On the western shore of the Mani, where the bare grey mountains of the southern Peloponnese drop straight into the sea, a small boat slides from daylight into darkness. Inside, still water reflects ranks of stalactites, some hanging just above your head, others continuing far […]

Ancient Olympic Games: Olympia, Festival, Sport and Panhellenic Identity

Ancient Olympic Games: Olympia, Festival, Sport and Panhellenic Identity The ancient Olympic Games were not, first and foremost, a sporting event. They were a religious festival in honour of Zeus, held every four years in a sanctuary in the green valley of Olympia in the western Peloponnese, and the races and contests took place within […]

Parthenon History: Temple, Treasury, Church and Museum Piece

Parthenon History: Temple, Treasury, Church and Museum Piece Few buildings have lived as many lives as the Parthenon. Raised in the fifth century BC as a temple to Athena, it also served as the strongroom of an empire, then for well over a thousand years as a church, briefly as a mosque, and finally as […]

Corinth Canal: An Ancient Isthmus and a Modern Engineering Cut

Corinth Canal: An Ancient Isthmus and a Modern Engineering Cut West of Athens, on the road into the Peloponnese, the motorway crosses a gap in the earth so narrow and so deep that it looks less like a waterway than a crack. Far below the bridge, a ribbon of blue-green water runs straight between near-vertical […]

Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus: Sound, Sanctuary and Performance

Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus: Sound, Sanctuary and Performance Stand in the round orchestra of the ancient theatre of Epidaurus and look up, and the whole hillside seems to fold towards you: fifty-five rows of pale limestone seats climbing a wooded slope in the Argolid, with nothing behind them but pine trees and sky. It is […]

Acropolis of Athens: Sacred Rock, Civic Symbol and Archaeological Landscape

Acropolis of Athens: Sacred Rock, Civic Symbol and Archaeological Landscape Seen from almost anywhere in central Athens, the Acropolis of Athens looks like a single monument: a pale limestone outcrop crowned by the Parthenon. Walk up it, and it turns out to be something more complicated. The rock was a Bronze Age citadel before it […]

Belfast Political Murals: Memory, Community and the City’s Changing Walls

Belfast Political Murals: Memory, Community and the City’s Changing Walls Walk up the Falls Road from Belfast city centre, or along the Shankill a few hundred metres to the north, and the gable ends of terraced houses begin to speak: a hunger striker smiles down from the side of a political office, soldiers of the […]

Irish Diaspora in Australia: Migration, Memory and a Journey Back to Ireland

Irish Diaspora in Australia: Migration, Memory and a Journey Back to Ireland At the 2021 census, more than 2.4 million people in Australia named Irish among their ancestries, and historians suspect the true number with an Irish forebear is far higher. For most of them, Ireland arrives as fragments: a surname, a county remembered by […]

Siamsa Tíre: Ireland’s National Folk Theatre and Living Performance in Kerry

Siamsa Tíre: Ireland’s National Folk Theatre and Living Performance in Kerry In Tralee’s Town Park stands a circular theatre modelled on the ancient stone ringforts of the Kerry countryside, and inside it works a company with an unusual mission. Siamsa Tíre, the National Folk Theatre of Ireland, tells its stories through dance, song, music and […]

Harland & Wolff Shipyard: Belfast’s Industrial Heritage Beyond the Titanic

Harland & Wolff Shipyard: Belfast’s Industrial Heritage Beyond the Titanic Look east across the River Lagan from almost anywhere in Belfast and two yellow gantry cranes fill the horizon. They stand over the Harland and Wolff shipyard, where for more than a century the city built ships for half the world, including liners that carried […]

Donegal Gaeltacht: Irish Language, Landscape and the North-West

Donegal Gaeltacht: Irish Language, Landscape and the North-West Drive west from Donegal town along the shore of Donegal Bay and, somewhere beyond the fishing harbour of Killybegs, the road signs begin to speak only Irish. The village at the foot of the Sliabh Liag cliffs is signposted Teileann, not Teelin, because in law that is […]

Donegal Tweed: Wool Craft and the Atlantic Landscape

Donegal Tweed: Wool Craft and the Atlantic Landscape Look closely at a length of Donegal tweed and the colour comes apart. What reads from across a room as a soft heather-brown turns out, at arm’s length, to be flecked with tiny knots of orange, moss green, purple and sea blue, as though the cloth had […]

Cliffs of Moher Geology: Reading Ireland’s Atlantic Edge

Cliffs of Moher Geology: Reading Ireland’s Atlantic Edge Stand on the path near O’Brien’s Tower and the Cliffs of Moher look at first like a single dark wall dropping into the Atlantic. Look a little longer and the wall resolves into stripes: pale bands of sandstone and darker bands of shale and siltstone, stacked almost […]