It’s not quite caveat emptor but the idea is similar. Tourism is primarily—the primary?—source of…
Down to New England 5: Monuments, Memorials and Memories
This was the branch that most frightened me, the one most perfectly positioned to do irreparable harm to the monument. Lower and smaller branches had already been removed, opening space around the slender column surmounted by its neoclassical urn. Four of us—two on...
Down to New England 1: Of Art, College Museums and Labels
Art lives in that kind of white, crystalline light. It doesn’t just come alive; it takes on a whole new existence. Those top galleries in the “new” Yale University Art Gallery? They were a mystical symphony hall and the art a choir of angels. The new structure unites...
The Eternal City 6: Colline e Scale
The Seven Hills of Rome (well, eight if you include the Pincian and ten if you cross the Tiber for the Vatican Hill and the Gianicolo) feature in legend and history. Sensible ancient Romans, Princes of the Church and the one-percenters of the 16th and 17th centuries...
The Eternal City 5: Architecture of Visions
In 2005, Jake Morrissey published a book called The Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini, and the Rivalry that Transformed Rome. Haven’t read it? Do. It’s brief, fascinating, dense with information about the birth of the Baroque in Rome, and it makes you care...