Walks that follow the footsteps of a particular famous person or event
Gardens are a part of the Riviera scenery like yachts, open-top sports cars and deposed government officials from corrupt cleptocracies. Unlike the mountains and the sea, they have not always been there but have become so much part of the cultural landscape that nobody remembers or can even imagine a time when they were not….
Minds much greater than my own have wrestled with this question without ever finding a conclusive answer: Where does the Riviera start? It does not take a great mind to see where it ends. Even I can see that it comes to a grinding halt at Cinque Terre, southeast of Genoa. As to its start…
More Riviera gardens to discover! Last week, we surveyed the area east of Monaco and strolled deep into Italy, concentrating on the coast’s “classic” garden country for Riviera gardens to discover But the less climatically blessed western part of the Riviera – where the mountains are often further away from the coast and give the…
The Riviera is famous for … well, many things in fact – speed boats, card sharps, minor royals – so it never ceases to surprise me how many of the visitors we meet have explicitly come to see one of the gardens of the Riviera. I am – to be honest – not a natural…
In our previous London spy walk on the trail of the Cambridge Five, we left off with Maclean and Burgess just about making it to Southampton for the day’s last ferry to France, never to return to the UK. The sudden disappearance of two middle-ranking foreign service officials, at least one of whom was under acute suspicion…
London may not be the world’s most beautiful city but it is probably its most storied. Almost every street corner has a story to tell: about rock music, Charles Dickens, Jack the Ripper and so on – the list of themes is virtually endless. London is also the capital of spy stories, and the most…
Earlier in the year, we took you on a “sculp-tour” through the city of Münster (in northwest Germany), which hosts an internationally famous sculpture exhibition every ten years and which – since 1977 – has become one of Europe’s hot spots for urban modern art. The city, one of Germany’s finest, is equally well-known for its…
For most of its history, Rimini – established by the Romans more than 2000 years ago – was a sleepy provincial town on the Adriatic coast. Within 20 years after the end of WWII, however, two dramatic changes occurred: first came the arrival of mass tourism. And then a local boy, the scion of a…
Münster is one of western Germany’s most favourite day trip destinations and also happens to be a modern art hotspot. People from the region and beyond like to come here partly to experience the town’s ancient and interesting history: in 1535, the Siege of Münster ended the tyrannical regime of the eccentric Jan van Leiden, a…
Enough about painters and the French Riviera! Entire books have been written about the way in which the great modernists of European painting – from Monet to Picasso – fell in love with the lights and the sights and the colours of southern France. You don’t even have to go to the library to read…