Spring 2016 timeless travels by enny vales

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Spring 2016

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Greece - but not as you know it. Our small ship Aegean Odyssey can visit smaller, less crowded harbours and take you to off-the-beaten-track destinations in the Aegean and beyond. We carry an average of 350 passengers, so our ship is also ideal for those who dislike travelling around with

hordes of people. With an on-board guest speaker programme and guided shore excursions included in the price, this style of cruising is perfect if you like to avoid the crowds and take the time to truly discover the more unusual destinations in Greece and the Aegean Sea. We look forward to welcoming you on board.

GREECE and the GREEK ISLANDS April 16, Sept 2 & 13 2016 15 Days from £2,445pp 10 Shore Excursions and 3 nights hotel in Athens included Athens - Hydra - Santorini - Heraklion - Rhodes - Delos - Mykonos - Patmos - Kavala Thessalonica - Volos - Skiathos - Piraeus NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT

TREASURES of the AEGEAN April 19, Sept 5 & 16 2016 12 Days from £1,695pp

ON THIS CRUISE

8 Shore Excursions included Athens - Hydra - Santorini - Heraklion - Rhodes - Delos - Mykonos - Patmos - Kavala Thessalonica - Volos - Skiathos - Piraeus

IN THE FOOTSTEPS of ST PAUL April 27 2016 15 Days from £2,445pp 11 Shore Excursions included Athens - Hydra - Santorini - Heraklion - Rhodes - Delos - Mykonos - Patmos - Kavala Thessalonica - Volos - Skiathos - Piraeus

A VOYAGE from ROME to the GREEK ISLANDS July 17 2016 17 Days from £2,795pp 14 Shore Excursions, 3 nights Athens and 2 nights in Rome included Rome - Sorrento - Palermo - Taormina - Corfu - Pylos - Gythion - Nauplia - Santorini Delos - Mykonos - Athens

MEDITERRANEAN CONTRASTS July 19 2016 12 Days from £1,495pp

NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT ON THIS CRUISE

10 Shore Excursions included Civitavecchia - Sorrento - Palermo - Taormina - Corfu - Pylos - Gythion - Nauplia Santorini - Delos - Mykonos - Athens

• Local wines • Olive oil • Kalamata olives • Roasted peppers • Thyme honey • Mild chillies

FREE GREEK HAMPER WORTH £50 WITH EVERY BOOKING*

WINNER

AWARDS

2015 VOYAGES TO ANTIQUITY BEST FOR ENRICHMENT

Meteora, Greece - the sandstone “columns in the sky” are crowned with monasteries built by anchorite monks from the 11th century onward.

Call 01865 410094 (1 877 398 1460 in the US) or visit www.voyagestoantiquity.com * Greek Hamper booking incentive applies to new UK bookings made on the Greece and the Greek Islands, A Voyage from Rome to the Greek Islands, Mediterranean Contrasts and Treasures of the Aegean itineraries only (19 Apr, 30 Apr, 19 Jul, 05 Sept, 16 Sept 2016 sailings) confirmed between 19/02/16 – 31/03/16. Restricted to one hamper per cabin booked which will be delivered to the UK address on the booking, on receipt of the full balance. Free delivery applies to UK mainland addresses only. No cash substitute will be offered. This offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer (excluding Odyssey Club member discount). Prices are per person based on two people sharing a cabin, in selected grades and are subject to availability at the time of booking.

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MAGAZINE

Welcome Spring 2016

don’t often have a grumble, but I must just say how frustrating our trains are here in the UK. On a recent visit to Holland the trains ran to time, were inexpensive and most helpfully offered free wifi - that worked. On returning to the UK and taking my very expensive train to the south west, I was excited to see that the train line offered free wifi too, something I’d never known. Sadly, as soon as you leave Waterloo station in London it ceases to work. Why?! Surely in this day and age a little free wifi should be possible. However, if I am on holiday, then wifi is not so important. And I’m sure if you were visiting the wonderful UNESCO heritage sites in Greece, art landscapes in Scotland, or exploring the sites of Canada or New Zealand, then there would be so much to see that you would only be interested in free wifi back at your hotel in the evenings! We have a new feature starting in this issue called ‘Traveller’s Tales’, which was inspired by hearing stories from a recent visit to Iran by the renowned publisher Barnaby Rogerson. Now that sounds like a group I would have enjoyed travelling with! Dig Diary is also back with digs, surveys or field schools to be found all over the world. So lots to discover and enjoy in this magazine. Happy reading!

Editors: Judith Casey, Barbara Pomeroy Design: Louise Wood Design With grateful thanks to: Nick Danziger

Contributors: Andrew Day

Cover photo: This is the view from the top of the Andromeda Galaxy Mound at Crawick Multiverse, an art landscape in the Scottish Uplands (photo by Charles Jenks, Crawick Artland Trust). The site is a major land restoration and art project in Dumfries & Galloway, utilising landscape art to transform a former open cast coal mine into an outdoor art space. Designed by landscape artist Charles Jencks, Crawick Multiverse is a stunning representation of exciting discoveries and theories of the universe.

Know somewhere fabulous to visit? Then let us know! @Ttravelsmag

Website: www.timeless-travels.co.uk

Nicholas Fogg

Editorial: editorial@timeless-travels.co.uk

Jane Fortune

Advertising: advertising@timeless-travels.co.uk

John R. Murray

Heinrich Hall

Maggie Struckmeier, Past Horizons

Matilda Hickson

General enquiries: enquiries@timeless-travels.co.uk

Archive, St. Anthony’s College, Oxford

Joshua J. Mark

Tel: +44 (0)1747 870017

Digital distributors: Goldkey Media

Barnaby Rogerson

Debbie Usher, Middle East Centre

Press Reader Printers & App: Pensord Press Editor-in-Chief, Founder & Publisher: Fiona Richards Timeless Travels • Spring 2016

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Garry Shaw

ISSN 2056 - 659X Timeless Travels Magazine is published by FPE Media Ltd © 2016 FPE Media Ltd. All rights reserved. Whether in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, this publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted without the written permission of the publisher.

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Contents 54

Spring 2016

ART ROUND UP:

TRAVELLER'S TALES: Barnaby Rogerson

Art and exhibition news INTREPID TRAVELLER: Freya Stark

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GREECE:

Guide to UNESCO World Heritage sites

FLORENCE: Overlooking female artists

SCOTLAND:

Crawick Multiverse: former coal mine to art landscape

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MAGAZINE

INTERVIEW: Nick Danziger

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BOOK REVIEW

ENGLAND: King Alfred's Folly

CANADA: Time travelling in Nova Scotia

SICILY:

Greek Temples at their best

MUSEUM FOCUS: The Frick, New York

NORWAY: Edvard Munch's Oslo

THE LAST WORD:

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NEW ZEALAND: Wine and Warriors

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Freya Stark

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Contributors Andrew Day Andrew’s first job in the travel industry was for Punk Publishing as a researcher, writer and photographer on the popular Cool Camping series, which are now the UK’s best-selling camping guidebooks. Since then, he has made his living as a full-time travel journalist, with his work appearing in several esteemed publications, including The Telegraph, Herb Lester, Bradt Travel Guides and TNT Magazine. Based in London, Andrew also writes sitcoms and contributes to the satirical BBC Radio 4 Extra show Newsjack. See: www. andrewjohnday.com

Jane Fortune, D.H.L. Author, lecturer, art collector and philanthropist, Jane is author of To Florence, Con Amore, 90 Ways to Live the City; Invisible Women, Forgotten Artists of Florence and Art by Women in Florence: A Guide Through 500 Years. Her book Invisible Women, Forgotten Artists of Florence was the basis of a PBS documentary of the same title, which won a coveted Emmy in 2013. She is the Cultural Editor of The Florentine, the English speaking news magazine in Florence, and serves on several Museum Boards of Trustees in the United States. When the World Answered: Women Artists for Florence After the 1966 Flood, with Linda Falcone, was published in October 2014.

Matilda Hickson Matilda studied archaeology at the University of Edinburgh and spent many years on excavations in Jordan, Egypt and Syria. A specialist in the Levant in the Middle Bronze Age, she has published two books on the subject. She has spent many years travelling around the Middle East, and for three years took numerous groups to the region as either guide lecturer or tour manager. She currently works as a freelance writer and photographer.

Barnaby Rogerson Barnaby is a lifelong traveller in the Islamic world. He is author of Biography of the Prophet Muhammad, a History of North Africa, The Heirs of the Prophet (an account of the early Caliphate), The Last Crusaders 1415-1580 and Rogerson’s Book of Numbers - the sacred numerological traditions of the world. Previously he had written guidebooks to Morocco, Tunisia, Istanbul and Cyprus, as well as working as a tour guide, journalist and builder of garden grottoes. He is currently writing about a dozen heroes from ancient North Africa. His day job is running Eland, a publishing house, which specializes in keeping classic travel books in print, www.travelbooks.co.uk. 6

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Spring 2016 Nicholas Fogg, MBE, FRSA Journalist, author, director, trustee, lecturer: Nick has written numerous books on wide ranging topics from Islam to Shakespeare and writes regularly for all the broadsheets. He was Mayor of Marlborough for two years and directed the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,as well as directing programmes at both the Edinburgh Festival and RADA. He lectures to both the literary and arts fraternities and is a consultant to the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is the Director of the Marlborough Jazz Festival, a fellow of Queen’s University, Ontario and a consultant to the Canadian Foreign Minister.

Heinrich Hall Fluent in four languages, Heinrich has lectured at Trinity College Dublin and was for many years the Assistant Director of the Irish Institute at Athens. A resident of Athens, he is active as a journalist reporting archaeological and cultural developments in print, online, as well as on radio and television. Heinrich has excavated in various parts of Europe and is specialised in Aegean prehistory, which he studied at University College Dublin. He is co-editor of the Blue Guide to the Aegean Islands. He now works for Peter Sommer Travels organising and leading many of their archaeological and cultural tours.

Joshua J. Mark (Staff writer) Joshua is an editor, director, and regular contributor to the online history site Ancient History Encyclopedia. His nonfiction has also appeared in Celtic Guide and his short fiction in Litro, Diddle Dog, Writes for All, and In Between Altered States, among others in print and on-line. He is a part-time professor of philosophy and writing at Marist College and lives in upstate New York, USA with his travel companions: wife Betsy, daughter Emily, and Sophie the dog.

Dr Garry Shaw (Staff writer) Garry is the author of four books on ancient Egypt, including The Pharaoh, Life at Court and on Campaign (2012) and The Egyptian Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Gods and Legends (2014). He gained his PhD in Egyptology from the University of Liverpool, and has taught at the American University in Cairo and the Egypt Exploration Society in London. He writes on North Africa and Middle Eastern cultural heritage for The Art Newspaper; is editor of Al Rawi: Egypt’s Heritage Review; and has developed an online Egyptology course for Oxford University’s Department for Continuing Education. His research has also featured in various documentaries. Timeless Travels • Spring 2016

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PETER SOMMER TRAVELS

Expert-led Archaeological & Cultural Tours & Gulet Cruises in Greece, Italy & Turkey

Our escorted tours will take you to some of the world’s most fascinating ancient & cultural sites. Discover them on our gulet cruises, gulet charters, walking tours & food tours with an archaeologist guide.

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Cruise aboard a traditional Turkish gulet and enjoy superb swimming, fabulous food and archaeological adventures.

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CRUISING THE AMALFI COAST The most elegant way to explore this stunning shore, its fabulous food and wine. You’ll discover many highlights including Pompeii, Capri, Amalfi and so much more.

EXPLORING ROME

CRUISING TO THE CYCLADES Explore the natural beauty and archaeological wonders of the Aegean in spring when the sites are carpeted with wildflowers. Discover Santorini, Delos, Naxos and many rarely visited small islands.

EXPLORING THE PELOPONNESE A new tour that explores this magnificent region.You’ll discover famous highlights including Mycenae, Olympia, Epidaurus and Mystras and many wonders off the beaten track.You’ll also savour some of the region’s best traditional cuisine.

CRUISING THE DODECANESE

The ultimate experience of a city that has shaped the identity and history of Europe like no other. Escorted by two archaeologists, you’ll discover a myriad of wonders and enjoy delicious food and wine.

A spectacular gulet cruise through the entire Dodecanese chain of islands including Samos, Patmos, Kos, Nisyros, Symi, Rhodes and no less than three UNESCO-listed World Heritage sites.

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TURKEY Discover Turkey’s turquoise coast and a wealth of fantastic ancient sites. Enjoy glorious swims and delicious food - the perfect family holiday.

An ideal tour for walkers and lovers of the sea. Escorted by Peter Sommer himself, you’ll explore fascinating ancient sites set in beautiful landscapes, stroll along Roman roads and aqueducts and cruise and swim in azure waters.

Visit our website to see all our cultural tours and request a copy of our brochure www.petersommer.com - Tel: +44 (0)1600 888 220 007 Peter Sommer ad.indd 49

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A guide to

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Greece is home to a large number of spectacular sites which have been placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Archaeologist Heinrich Hall has worked in Greece for over 20 years and gives his personal tips when visiting the sites

reece, the ‘cradle of western civilisation’, is home to a host of immensely significant sites, places of importance, interest, beauty and impact. Not all of them reflect the civilisation we call Classical Greece - they range from prehistoric citadels via Classical temples to Byzantine monasteries and beyond. Only 17 are on the UNESCO list so far although there are definitely more that deserve the accolade.

The Acropolis of Athens

The most obvious image of Greece and one of the most famous architectural monuments in the world, the Acropolis is the sacred rock that defines the heart of the city, ancient and modern. Settled since prehistory, it became the citadel of a Bronze Age realm in the 2nd millennium BCE, continued as a fortress in the Iron Age, but eventually was transformed into the formal religious centre of the Classical city. Its redesign after the famous Persian sack of 480 BCE, masterminded by the political leader Perikles and the artist Pheidias, began in 450 BCE, when Athens was at the height of her wealth and power. The main monuments then built include the awesome (in the true sense of the word) Propylaia, the ornate Temple of Nike, the highly original Erechtheion and - of course - the mighty Parthenon, the enormous shrine to Athena, the city’s patron goddess, that has become the most recognisable image of Greece and of ancient Greek architecture. A visit to

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the Acropolis should also include the many shrines and sanctuaries along its slopes and the state-of-the-art Acropolis Museum, with its wonderful collections devoted to Archaic and Classical art. Heinrich’s tip: Walk up to the northeast corner of the Parthenon and line up your eyes on a level with the steps of its foundation. If you look along those steps, you will spot the incredible optimal reﬁnement of the building all its straight lines are actually curved, meaning that no two blocks are quite the same shape.

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Daphni, Osios Loukas & Delphi

Within easy reach of Athens are the UNESCO-listed monasteries at Daphni and Osios Loukas, both wonderful treasuries of Byzantine art. Daphni also has stunning mosaics,

which have only recently reopened to the public after 16 years of renovations A little further from Athens, but reachable in an ambitious day trip or with a single overnight is the archaeological site of Delphi, the famous oracular sanctuary to Apollo. This is not just a World Heritage site, but also one of those evocative of all of antiquity’s sacred places. Temples, treasuries, a theatre and a stadium, all in a relentlessly lovely setting, make the visit unforgettable, along with a museum housing one of the finest collections of archaeological finds in the country.

The archaeological sites of Mycenae and Tiryns

These are the two bestpreserved of the great Mycenaean citadels surrounding the Plain of Argos. Linked with the mythology of the Homeric

Previous pages: Monasteries at Meteora (Image: Dennis David Auger, CC BY-SA 4.0) Left: Temple of Apollo, Delphi Right, clockwise: The Acropolis, Athens; The Lion Gate at Mycenae; Mycenaean city wall; Caryatids at the Acropolis. (All images © Heinrich Hall)

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heroes and of Heracles, the quintessential hero of the Greek mainland, they were the incredibly well-defended centres of the palatial civilisation we call Mycenaean, thriving between 1500 and 1200 BCE. Their huge ‘Cyclopean’ walls, complex gates, underground cisterns, so-called palaces, enormous tombs in their vicinity and many other features make them firstrate sites, expressions of a still poorlyunderstood ancient culture. To this day, their remains are jaw-droppingly monumental and highly evocative but can be hard to understand without an expert guide who can bring them to life and help you understand their significance. Their interpretation can be helped by the superb accompanying museums at Nafplio and at Mycenae itself – because once again, it is not just the architectural remains that have a story to tell, but also the fascinating artefacts associated with them: jewellery, weaponry, painted vases, figurines and frescoes. Heinrich’s tip: If you drop by Tiryns in late summer, you may come across the German (Heidelberg University) excavation team. If you ask nicely, they might show you what they’re up to.

The Sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidaurus

Near the shores of the Saronic Gulf, the setting for the Sanctuary

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of Asklepios is a place renowned for its serene atmosphere, its setting in a particularly peaceful and verdant Mediterranean landscape with the scent of pine trees wafting across the site, but especially for its ancient theatre. The latter is considered the most beautiful and most perfectly proportioned of its kind, creating a strong sense of focus, helped by the superb acoustics and an impression of harmony that belies its enormous size: it seats over 14,000. The remains of the nearby sanctuary, dedicated to Asklepios, the God of Healing, are also fascinating because they show the structure and functions of an ancient health resort. Epidaurus is a soothing and refreshing place to visit, humbling and elevating at the same time. It is especially impressive during the summer festivals, when a series of plays (not all of them ancient) are staged at night, using no artificial amplification. Heinrich’s tip: guides do all kinds of things to demonstrate the amazing acoustics, such as clapping their hands, dropping a pin, striking a match and so on. Much more eﬀective stand on the top tier of seating (or sit) and make a friend standing in the middle of the circular orchestra simply say something in a low, casual voice!

The archaeological site of Olympia

One of antiquity’s most famous places, Olympia is the site of a major panHellenic (all-Greek) sanctuary dedicated to eus and locale of the original Olympic Games. Its remains, mostly from the 7th century BCE to the 5th century CE, are extremely interesting making it easy to imagine the place in its heyday, when thousands of spectators and athletes would flock to its groves every four years to celebrate the father of the gods and observe the competitions. The monuments visible at Olympia include the famous Temple of eus, once home to the gold-and-ivory statue that was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the venerable Temple of Hera, the bouleuterion or council chamber, an ancient hotel, the training facilities and of course - the mother of all stadiums. The fact that all of the Greek World attended the Games meant that the participating city states all tried to be visibly represented and commemorated on the site, making it a microcosm of ancient Greece.

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The site also includes a superb museum, full of first-rate sculpture, weaponry, athletic equipment and much more, including the wonderful statue of Hermes by Praxiteles – one of the very few surviving pieces by one of the most famous ancient sculptors. Heinrich’s tip: To understand the sheer size of the Temple of Zeus, don’t concentrate on the single re-erected column. Have your photo taken next to the fallen ones on the southern side – no scale is more eﬀective than your own si e

Left: The theatre at Epidaurus (Image: © Heinrich Hall) Left: Praxiteles’ statue of Hermes and infant Dionysos (Image: tetraktys, CC BY-SA 2.5) Above: The Palaestra at Olympia (Image: © Heinrich Hall)

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The Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae

This extraordinary and romantic monument is one of the least-visited World Heritage sites in the country, due to its remote location in the rugged mountains of Arcadia. The same remoteness has ensured its extraordinary preservation, comparable to the betterknown Greek temples of Sicily, since it was never used as a quarry. The modernist tent-like structure that currently covers the site to protect

it from erosion adds to the strange and out-of-this world atmosphere that prevails at this near-perfect example of a 5th-century BCE Doric edifice. Getting to Bassai entails a drive through some of the Peloponnese’s most remarkable scenery and some of the region’s famously beautiful mountain villages. The Temple itself, typical at first sight, is actually full of peculiarities, such as its unusual orientation, the presence of a side entrance to its inner sanctum, the central placement of one of the oldest known Corinthian columns and much more. The temple also has a somewhat mysterious identity - that of Apollo Epidauros, the deity to whom it was dedicated. Heinrich’s tip: Simple: stay for a while and take in the atmosphere. If you have time, climb uphill from the Temple. After about 20 minutes you reach the summit of Mt. Kotilion, with fantastic views all around, and with the foundations of another temple, that to Apollo’s sister, Artemis!

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To this day, their remains are jawdroppingly monumental and highly evocative but can be hard to understand without an expert guide who can bring them to life 9

The archaeological site of Mystras

Mystras is one of Greece’s Medieval marvels. Initially founded in 1249 by William of Villehardouin, who erected the fortress on the hilltop above, the site, located near Sparta, became the Byzantine capital of the Peloponnese, especially in the 13th to 15th centuries, when it was a centre of thought, faith and art. Today, what is left of the once-busy town are the castle, the hulking Palace of the Despots, and especially numerous chapels, churches and monasteries, many of which are richly decorated with fresco paintings of the Palaiologan Period, the final flourish of Byzantine art before the fall of Constantinople. The site also offers wonderful views over the plain of the river Eurotas and modern day Sparta. Heinrich’s tip: Go early and climb up to the castle. Not everyone does it – but the views are superb! The five World Heritage sites (Mycenae and Tiryns are listed as one) make exploring the Peloponnese one of the richest areas to explore, although Sicily still has the most World Heritage sites listed. This might change in the future, as the Venetian fortresses of Methoni and Nafplio, as well as ancient Messene, are considered possible contenders which would push the Peloponnese to the top of the list.

The Early Christian and Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki

They are just one aspect of that truly fascinating and very lively city (one of the few large cities in Europe that can boast a main square open to the sea on one side) - but a highly important one. The city, founded about 315 BCE, became the main centre and port of Macedonia under the Romans and has remained so until the present day. The site was

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Left, top: General view of the Palace of Mystras (Image: © Heinrich Hall) Left, middle: The Bassae Temple under cover (Image: © Heinrich Hall) Left, bottom: Fresco with a representation of a wild boar hunt. From the later Tiryns palace (Image: Tkoletsis CC BY-SA 3.0)

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especially significant in Late Roman and Byzantine times, when it was a seat of power, an economic hub and a place of fine art and architecture second only to Constantinople itself. Key monuments include the Rotonda, originally built as a mausoleum to the Roman Emperor Galerius around 300 CE and later dedicated as a church of St. George the 5th and 7th century CE enormous Basilica of St. Demetrios the 5th century CE Church of the Virgin Acheiropoietos and the splendid 8th century CE Agia Sophia. The city also has excellent archaeological and Byzantine museums. Both of them have to be seen to be believed: stunning material from the region is presented in a very modern and visually highly effective exhibition style: the Gold of Macedon exhibit is truly world class Heinrich’s tip: Don’t miss out on the superb Late Roman and Byzantine city walls, especially the upper section with great panoramas of city and sea.

Right, top: Seafront at Thessaloniki (Image: © Heinrich Hall) Right, middle: Church of Panagia Chalkeon, Thessaloniki (Image: Konstantinos Stampoulis, CC BYSA 2.5-2.0-1.0) Right, bottom: The church of the Rotonda, Thessaloniki (Image: © Heinrich Hall)

Ancient Aigai, better known by its modern name of Vergina, is one of the most spectacular visits on anyone’s itinerary to Greece. The site was founded as the new capital to the Kingdom of Macedon by Philip II, the father of Alexander the Great. When Philip was murdered there in 336 BCE, Alexander had him buried with lavish grave goods of jewellery, furniture and weaponry. The mound covering Philip’s grave and a series of other royal tombs was discovered in the 1980s, yielding one of the world’s most astonishing assemblages of archaeological treasure. It is now seen as an unbelievably well-presented underground museum, evocative of the immense wealth expended on the king’s funeral and including literally dozens of

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The archaeological site of Aigai

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objects of unparalleled craftsmanship, such as Philip’s golden funeral wreath, painstakingly imitating one of oak leaves. Heinrich’s tip: If you inquire about the other monuments at Aigai, the guards will show you the way to the ancient theatre. It is not far away. It isn’t too well preserved, but it is the very spot where Philip was murdered. On the slope above it sit the foundations of his palace, which are slated to open for the public very soon

Meteora

Meteora is one of Greece’s best-known sites and perhaps its most picturesque. It is famous for its series of eremite monasteries, set in seemingly impossible locations on the tops of steep and tall rock pillars that overlook the fertile Plain of Thessaly. Monastic activity here began in the 11th century, but reached a peak of activity in the 14th - 16th centuries. In Meteora’s heyday, there were 24 monasteries, of which four are still occupied. They are fascinating not just for their incredible setting, but also for the fine examples of 15th and 16th century fresco paintings preserved in the chapels and attendant buildings. Heinrich’s tip: also visit the prehistoric cave of Theopetra nearby. The archaeological site of Philippi is a candidate for future UNESCO listing (it is believed that it will be Greece’s next site to reach that stage), as is Mt. Olympus itself. Intrepid visitors, as long as they are male, could also add a visit to the Monks’ Republic of Mt. Athos which is another listed site.

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Pythagoreion and the Heraion of Samos

This double listing comprises one of Greece’s most astounding archaeological landscapes, especially for remains of the 6th century BCE Archaic period, as already noted by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. Modern Pythagoreion occupies the site of ancient Samos city, with its huge harbour mole, massive walls and the amazing Tunnel of Eupalinos, a 1000 metre-long rock-cut channel that allowed an aqueduct to supply the city with water from the other side of a mountain - certainly a masterpiece of very ancient Greek engineering and a milestone in the history of civil engineering The nearby Heraion, birthplace of the Goddess Hera, sister and wife to Zeus, is now a remarkably atmospheric place set in a coastal swamp. Little remains of its once mighty Temple, one of the three great Ionian edifices, but the museum at Vathi is a veritable treasure trove, holding countless wonderful items excavated at the Heraion. Among them are the votive offerings from all over the Mediterranean and far beyond, as well as key specimens of Archaic metalwork and ivory carving and a series of extraordinary colossal sculptures. Heinrich’s tip: The museum contains a vast amount of incredible fine votive offerings from many periods and places. Take your time and look at them in detail. My favourite piece is the ivory-carved figurine of a male dancer. rom the th century BCE and probably made in Crete, it was once part of a musical instrument.

Left: The golden larnax and the golden grave crown of Philip from ancient Aigai (Image: Sarah Murray, CC BYSA 2.0) Above: Panoramic view of Meteora (Image: Wisniowy, GFDL) Right: Holy Monastery of Rousanou, Meteora (Image: Dennis Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0)

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The historic centre (Chora) with the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian and the Cave of the Apocalypse on the Island of Patmos

This is a rich assemblage of medieval (and later) sites on that tiny island. Patmos is the setting of the late 1st century CE vision described in the biblical Apocalypse, inspiring the great monastery founded in 1088. Over time, that fortresslike main monastery, decorated with superb frescoes of 12th century and later dates, gave rise to various further monasteries and hermitages throughout the island including the one covering the cave where the vision is said to have taken place. Later, from the 15th century onwards, an a uent town grew around the main monastery populated by refugees from now-Ottoman controlled Constantinople and later from Crete. Today’s visitor therefore has a chance to admire not only a wonderfully convoluted example of Byzantine architecture and fresco decoration, but also the serene and impressive mansions of the labyrinthine Chora surrounding it. Heinrich’s tip: Don’t just go to the monastery and leave. Take your time to stroll through the lanes of the Chora – sit for a coﬀee, and ﬁnd the superb little archaeological museum.

The Medieval city of Rhodes

The capital of the largest island in the Dodecanese is a place of immense historical depth. Set upon the remains of an ancient Greek city founded in 408 BCE and its Roman and Byzantine continuation, the city as experienced today is essentially the creation of the crusader Knights of Saint John. They took

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over the island in 1309 and controlled it, along with most of the Dodecanese, until 1522. Its medieval street-scape, one of the most comprehensively preserved of its kind, is surrounded by a truly astonishing set of massive walls and moats of huge dimensions. Inside the town stands a host of monuments, including various churches and chapels, the auberges or headquarters of the various tongues (branches) of the Knights, the Hospital of the Knights, now housing the Archaeological Museum, and the Palace of the Grand Masters with further exhibits. Heinrich’s tip: On a few occasions each

year, the enormous walls can be walked for nearly their entire length. Find out when that is and time your visit accordingly if you can. If you can’t, get away from the main tourist drag and explore the back lanes at leisure. At night, the square outside the Turkish Bath is a great place for a cool drink.

The Island of Delos

The tiny island of Delos, next to Mykonos in the Cyclades, is one of the most important archaeological sites anywhere in the Mediterranean. In Greek antiquity it was considered sacred and believed to be the birthplace Timeless Travels Spring 2016

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Left, top: Panorama of Pythagoreion, the place of birth of Pythagoras (Image: Pe-sa CC BY-SA 3.0) Left, bottom: View of theatre at Delos (Image: Bernard Gagon, CC BY-SA 3.0) Above, clockwise: Terrace of Lions, Delos (Image: Bernard Gagnon, CCBY-SA3.0); View of Chora with Monastery of St. John (Image: Valeria Cassari, CC BY-SA 3.0); View across Rhodes and Amboise Gate at Rhodes (Images: © Heinrich Hall)

of the god Apollo and his twin sister Artemis, making it a sanctuary of great appeal throughout the Greek World and beyond. The city state of Athens especially developed a veritable obsession with Delos, embellishing it with fine monuments. Later, the island gained important tax privileges and became an immensely important centre of trade and one of the earliest major Roman settlements in the Aegean. As a result of this history, Delos, which is uninhabited today, is nearly fully covered in archaeological remains, subject to excavation since more than a century ago. The visitor can stroll the lanes, streets and squares of ancient Delos, viewing its shrines and temples, shops and theatre, but also many of its fine residential homes with their architectural details and decorations. The excavations have also revealed an extraordinary wealth of astonishing finds, from household items to works of art, which are housed in the wonderful online museum. einrich s tip the ﬁnds from elos include an unusually high proportion of erotica. They are not necessarily highlighted in the museum - so look out for them! So as you see there is a lot of World Heritage to be discovered, enjoyed, explored and admired in Greece.

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Go early and climb up to the castle. Not everyone does it – but the views are superb! Heinrich is co-editor of the Blue Guide to Greece: The Aegean Islands. This is the first full Blue Guide treatment of all the Greek Aegean islands in a single volume. It contains a wealth of detail on all aspects of these popular destinations: early history and archaeology, Classical and Byzantine art and architecture, Venetian and Ottoman monuments, and present-day concerns such as where to eat, which beaches to visit, and how to get from island to island. You can travel with Heinrich around the sites in Greece as he is an expert guide for Peter Sommer Travels. Peter offers ten specialist led tours in 2016 to Greece. For more information, see www.petersommer.com/ greece/tours/

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NORWAY

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Walking in the footsteps of

Edvard Munch

One of Modernism’s most innovative and controversial artists, Edvard Munch, lived a perpetually troubled life which spawned some of the world’s most instantly recognisable images. Andrew Day explores the sights that inspired his most intense and evocative work

r Munch was removed after a rather unsavoury incident,’ Kay Johnsen says, uncorking a Cuvée Jubileum to accompany the medallions of reindeer that have arrived at my table. For it was here in the elegant dining rooms of the Engebret Café that Edvard Munch – apparently unfairly – accused a waiter of stealing his gloves and scarf. It was an embarrassing episode during which the police were called and Munch was forced to stand-down from the Norwegian Art Association as a result. His framed resignation letter hangs by the restaurant’s low-slung entrance. I ask if the artist’s accusation may have been justified, ‘Perhaps. However too much Absinthe is more likely,’ Kay smiles. Edvard Munch, creator of some of the world’s most renowned images – not least The Scream – is the reason I’ve come to Oslo (or Kristiania, as it was known then). Few painters are better known and yet less understood than the Norwegian and I want to discover the city that marked Munch and perhaps find a few traces of the artist himself.

Grünerløkka I thank Kay for a fabulous lunch and head for Grünerløkka. Oslo’s traditionally working class suburb has transformed itself from a gritty, industrial district to the city’s most vibrant Timeless Travels • Spring 2016

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Above: Self-Portrait at 53 Am Strom in Warnemünde. 1907. Left, clockwise from top left: Munch, Anxiety. 1894; Munch Museum, Ekely (Image: A. Day); Munch, The Seine at Saint-Cloud. 1890; National Gallery, Oslo (Image: Annar Bjørgli/Nasjonalmuseet); Munch, Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine. 1906; Fossveien 7 (Image: A. Day). All pictures from Munch Museum, Oslo, unless otherwise stated.

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Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. hangout. A long road leads into Birkelunden, a busy square where bearded hipsters rummage through vintage clothing, rugs and records at the weekly flea market. Finally, at Fossveien 7, I find a plaque marking the spot where Munch lived. I’m surprised at how, well, middle class the place looks: a tall townhouse brightly painted yellow, in a pretty street peppered with trees and a park where children play tag. But things have changed. A once cramped apartment was the site of despair and sorrow for a young Edvard. The household was beset by life-threatening illnesses and the premature deaths of his mother and closest sister, Sophie, from tuberculosis at the age of just 15. All this was explained by Munch’s father, a Christian fundamentalist, as acts of ‘divine punishment’. It is un-surprising then, that Munch’s earliest work dealt with emotional suffering. A comment he made later in life shows how Munch saw these experiences as vital to his artistic and personal development, ‘Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. y suﬀerings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art.’ I totter past Grünerløkka’s bohemian restaurants and pocket-sized parks to seek out Schous Plass 1, the address where Munch first demonstrated such personal expression with his breakthrough painting, The Sick Child (1885). The portrait records his feverish, pale sister turning towards a woman in black, grasping her slight hand. The woman – a nurse or mother – drops her head, bowed down in grief. All hope is lost. Munch returned to this event again and again, completing six more oil paintings over the next 40 years. First exhibited in 1886, the piece prompted outrage from colleagues and critics alike for its ‘overtly unconventional qualities,’ such as a scratched paint surface and unfinished appearance. However, once he began to exhibit, Munch gained a tiny group of supporters, which helped him to survive psychologically, even though he was always close to the breadline. Today, the three-storey cream coloured building houses Edvard’s Kaffebar, a sociable, everyday coffee house, where I dodge the winter wind and enjoy a steaming mug of milky hot chocolate.

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Left: Munch, The Sick Child, 1907 Below: Munch’s aﬀebar Image © Andrew Day)

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Exploring the city

Above: Artwork by Munch and the sculptor Vigeland together at the Munch Museum (Image: © Munch Museum) Right: The elegant Grand Hotel on Karl Johans Gate

I head back to my hotel, The Grand, on Karl Johans Gate – central Oslo’s downtown artery, buzzing with colourful street performers and chic shop windows. As the sun sets around 3pm, the crowds fail to subside, merely switching their consumption from shopping to eating and drinking. En route I meet a procession of Oslo-ites flowing out from an enormous mall: black-coated shoppers, gazing ahead, advancing towards me as if under hypnosis. A homeless woman sits hunched over the cobbles, concealed in a jumble of blankets. Drums throb and the chiselling of ice sculptures fill the biting northern breeze. A group of over-excited teenage boys roar ‘Drikke! Drikke! Drikke!’ This could easily be a scene from Munch’s anxiety-ridden painting, Evening on Karl Johan Street (1892). Feeling the cold, I retreat to a watering hole established in Munch’s lifetime. Or at least I’d hoped to. The Grand Hotel’s opulent adjoining café was a favoured late-night drinking spot for Munch and other members of Norway’s artistic intelligentsia, but unfortunately its doors closed only weeks prior to my arrival, delivering shock to the city. I pop my head round the open door of the now derelict, wood-panelled restaurant and spot the corner table where Munch famously painted

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Henrik Ibsen, the country’s most cherished literary figure. Next morning, I visit Oslo’s 15-acre Botanical Garden – a green oasis in the city – before meeting Tonje Lieberg for a guided tour of the Munch Museum. A dual exhibition is in full swing, comparing two titans of Norwegian art: Edvard Munch and sculptor Gustav Vigeland. ‘They lived in the same cities, mixed in the same circles, yet many believe the two were rivals more than friends,’ Tonje reveals. I begin to explore the dim-lit space, comparing masterpieces. Munch is represented by a sketch of The Scream (1895); Love and Pain (1894), a terrifying vision of a man locked in a vampire’s tortured embrace, believed to be a reference to the artist’s illicit visits to prostitutes; and Puberty (1895), which shows a bug-eyed girl

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mortified by the onset of womanhood. Vigeland replies with powerful works like Fear (1892) and Hell II (1897). Seeing Munch and Vigeland side-byside feels like a dizzying tennis match in which two artists rage in motifs of sex, angst and Doomsday. It is not a pleasant journey. You want to get out of there, and yet you stay. It’s all too compelling. So it seems there are many reasons to exhibit Munch and Vigeland together. Strangely, this is the first time anyone has done so, however, given its success, the museum plans to exhibit Munch alongside other artists and photographers, including Asger Jorn, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jasper Johns.

Success at last As the exhibition moves on, Tonje tells me the Berlin Artists’ Association – an institution recommending primarily German artists - invited Munch to exhibit on 5th November 1892. ‘On the stroke of ten the doors were thrown open to great

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anticipation. By eleven Munch was once again listening to the hiss of an outraged society.’ The exhibition closed after only eight days, with The Frankfurter Zeitung describing Munch as, ‘An absolutely demented character’. However, the incident became a succès de scandale for Munch, with the ensuing fame, or rather notoriety, making him an overnight celebrity among the avant-garde community. Determined to capitalise on his newfound infamy, the 28-year old moved to Berlin permanently in December of that year, ‘All in all, I think I will make out well here in Germany,’ he wrote. At clocking-off time, I’m on a mission to discover a slice of modern-day Oslo. The city’s spectacular white opera house appeared around a bend, submerged like a half-sunken ship into the icy waters of the Oslo ord. Opened in 2008, the building’s sloping marble roof can be walked over, and, although it’s not exactly encouraged, adrenaline junkies can be tempted to snowboard

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Above: Edvard Munch at the National Gallery, Oslo (Image: © Annar Bjørgli/ Nasjonalmuseet)

down it. Alas, being a mere pedestrian I take my seat in the warm, horseshoe-shaped auditorium, and soon I’m taken on a journey of sheer beauty from the astonishing Norwegian pianist, Leif Ove Andsnes. Still, I’m not here for the musicianship. The next day I stand in perhaps the most remarkable room of paintings I have ever seen. Right at The National Gallery’s heart, the Munch room displays 17 of his paintings permanently, including the most famous version of The Scream (1893, there are four in total, three in Oslo); The Girls on the Pier (1901); Portrait of Hans Jaeger (1889); Ashes (1894); and the darkly erotic Madonna (1894), which formed part of a series called The Frieze of Life. Following his father’s death, Munch produced 22 works for the frieze, and perhaps suggestive of his state of mind, other paintings bore titles such as Anxiety, Despair, and Death in the Sickroom. The 1902 exhibition won wholesale approval in Germany, and Munch was suddenly collectible.

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‘With ruthless contempt for form, clarity, elegance, wholeness, and realism, he paints with intuitive strength of talent and most subtle visions of the soul,’ one critic wrote. ‘It is like a fairy tale!’ Munch rejoiced in a letter to his aunt. While Munch’s reputation flourished in the early 1900s, his physical and emotional health deteriorated. In the next few years, his drinking – which had long been excessive - grew uncontrollable, and after a three-day binge, Munch checked himself into a Copenhagen nerve clinic. Later that year, he wrote to his friend Jappe Nilssen, ‘My mind is like a glass of cloudy water. I am now letting it stand to become clear again. I wonder what will happen when the dregs settle at the bottom’. Munch underwent a programme including mild electric shock therapy, daily massage and plenty of sleep. His mind did clear. Eight months later Munch was released from hospital and, in a calmer frame of mind, returned to Norway to lead a life of peaceful solitude.

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Seeing Munch and Vigeland side-by-side feels like a dizzying tennis match in which two artists rage in motifs of sex, angst and Doomsday. It is not a pleasant journey. You want to get out of there, and yet you stay. It’s all too compelling. Visit to Ekely A 20-minute tram ride delivered me to the Ekely, a former agricultural nursery, which Munch purchased in 1916. Here he was to settle for the rest of his life. I’m told it’s easy to find, however, thanks to my faulty friend Google Maps, I find myself disoriented in a neighbour’s back garden, before an elderly resident nods me in the opposite direction. Clearly I’m not the first Munch-stalker to trample across her vegetable patch. Though Ekely’s main building was torn down over 50 years ago, the separate studio where he worked still stands and is open to the public in summer. The three-storey-high walls are covered with reproductions and photographs of what Munch termed as his ‘children’ – his paintings. Later, I sit outside on a bench, peering down a gentle slope, viewing half-timber homes surrounded by ancient elm trees and the far off glow of the city. Munch recorded this seductive view in Starry Night (1922), reminiscent of Van Gogh’s masterpiece, and would take up more landscape paintings, depicting the countryside around him. During the final years of his life, Munch created several poignant self-portraits at Ekely. In Between the Clock and the Bed (1942), Munch strains to remain upright, arms hanging by his sides, bordered between a clock and his deathbed. It is unflinchingly revealing. The following winter, more than 800 tons of ammunition exploded on Oslo Harbour, claiming 120 lives. The explosions blew out windows over the entire city, and also at Ekely, where Munch remained in the frosty draught, deeply shaken by the incident. This resulted in chronic asthmatic bronchitis, from which he did not recover. Edvard Munch died at Ekely on 23rd January 1944, aged 80. Back in the city, a sleepy but charming side of Oslo is revealed at Telthusbakken: a steep, narrow road lined with colourful, well-preserved wooden houses from the late 18th century. It feels like the oldest street in town. Aker Church - painted by Munch as a teenager in 1881 - perches on top, leading me to the artist’s final resting place, Vår Frelsers Gravlund (our saviour’s cemetery). What became a fashionable place for burials, today boasts a wealth of famous incumbents,

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Left: Munch’s headstone in Vår Frelsers Gravlund (Our Saviour’s cemetery) Below: Colourful houses in Telthusbakken (Both images © Andrew Day)

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among them Henrik Ibsen, Camilla Collett and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature. Munch’s grave sits in befitting isolation. I walk over to his ice-cold slab, which seemed, at that moment, forgotten.

Ekeberg Hill The number 34 bus takes me to the outskirts of Oslo for the final leg of my journey. I was craving a smouldering sunset, something to conjure up a touch of drama for such an exciting prospect. For it was here, on the rocky ledge of Ekeberg Hill – which peers westwards over the city – that Edvard Munch found himself walking with two friends. ‘The sun was setting. Suddenly the sky turned blood red. I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence. There was blood and tongues of ﬁre above the blue-black ord and the city. y friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – I sensed an inﬁnite scream passing through nature’. That ‘infinite scream’ became The Scream (1893), an icon of modern art, a Mona Lisa for our time. Munch’s unforgettable, nightmarish portrait (or is it a self-portrait?) of a ghoulish, sexless, hairless creature, with eyes-filled with terror, has come to symbolise anxiety and uncertainty in the modern world. You can buy ‘Scream’ key rings, mugs, fridge magnets; even child star Macaulay Culkin parodied

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the painting for Home Alone’s movie poster. In May 2012, Munch’s 1895 pastel version became the (then) most expensive portrait ever sold at auction – fetching $119.9m (£73.9m) at Sotheby’s in New York. The sale beat the previous world record, held by Pablo Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust (1932), confirming The Scream’s iconic status. As the pink-orange sun fell rapidly into Oslo’s distant hills, I watch a young couple reach Ekeberg Hill’s familiar lookout, now marked with a ‘Scream’ plaque. One raises a selfie stick, the other clutching an empty gold frame – both re-enact the painting’s open-mouthed expression of horror. They love it. But The Scream aside, there is much more to Edvard Munch. Following his footsteps was a remarkable way to discover Oslo; true, his company was often dark and heart breaking, but it gave my encounters sensitivity and depth. What is already an immersive city became much more – and seeing Oslo through Munch’s eyes, complete with all his self-lacerating honesty, was an enriching experience. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Andrew Day travelled to Oslo as a guest of the Oslo Tourist Board and stayed at the Grand Hotel www. grand.no

Above, left: Ekeberg Hill where The Scream was painted (Image © Andrew Day) Above, right: Munch, The Scream, 1893, National Gallery, Oslo

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The Life Of Edvard Munch 1863 Born on 12 December in Løten, 140 km north of the capital Kristiania (renamed Oslo in 1924). Before Edvard turned one, the family moved to Kristiania. 1868 Aged five, Edvard’s mother dies from tuberculosis. Her sister, Karen Bjølstad, assumes management of the household. 1877 Edvard lost his sister Sophie to the same illness. He suffered from chronic asthmatic bronchitis and had several serious cases of fever. 1880 After training as an engineer for one year, Munch decided that painting would be his life's work. In December, he enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design in Kristiania. 1882 On Karl Johans Gate, Munch rents a studio with six colleagues. The young painters receive instruction from the respected naturalist painter, Christian Krohg. 1885 Munch travelled abroad for the first time. He first went to Antwerp, where he exhibited a portrait of his sister Inger at the World Exhibition. Afterwards, he visited Paris and studied the collections at the Louvre. 1889 Munch organises his first solo exhibition in the Student Society, showing 63 paintings and 46 drawings. During the summer, he holidayed with his family in the coastal village of Åsgårdstrand. 1893 Whilst visiting Berlin, Munch frequents the literary and intellectual community. Members include: August Strindberg, Dagny Juel and her husband, the Polish author Stanislaw Przybyszewski. 1898 Meets Tulla Larsen, with whom he begins an intimate and tumultuous relationship. 1902 Munch meets Larsen for an attempted reconciliation. There was a revolver in the house and Munch accidentally shoots himself in the left hand. He blamed Larsen for the accident and broke off all contact. 1907 Munch spends the summer in the German seaside resort of Warnemünde. There, he experimented with different techniques, evident in scenes of men bathing at the beach.

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1909 Begins design work on decorations for the University of Kristiania Festival Hall, known as the Aula. The competition to decorate the hall was long lasting, but Munch eventually won the commission. 1916 Decorations for the Aula were completed. Munch’s murals, painted to celebrate the university’s centenary, include The Sun - a dazzling evocation of the power of light. 1922 Munch creates a series of pictures known as The Late Frieze of Life and The Human Mountain at Ekely. He did not receive any further commissions for decorations, with the exception of the worker’s dining room at the Freia Chocolate Factory. 1927 Large retrospective exhibitions held in Berlin and Oslo. 1930 Munch contracts an eye disease in May, and rests until August. During this period he takes a series of photographic self-portraits. 1937 Eighty-two works by Munch in German museums are confiscated and sold by the Nazis, labelled ‘degenerate art’. Many of these were repatriated the following year and auctioned off. 1943 Munch continued to have great capacity for work, and he celebrated his 80th birthday in December. 1944 Edvard Munch dies peacefully at Ekely on 23rd January. In his will, Munch bequeaths all his artwork to the city of Oslo; these include 1,000 paintings and 15,400 prints. A special thanks to the Munch Museum for supplying this information.

Above: Portrait of Edvard Munch, photograph from the National Library of Norway (Image: AnneSophie Ofrim, CC BY-2.0)

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Getting there Flying Many countries’ national carriers fly direct to Oslo from their capitals. E.g. United Airlines, British Airways, Emirates, PIA, Qatar, KLM Germanwings, Qantas, and Czech airlines.

Visas Not required for citizens or residents of EU countries. Those from Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and the USA can also enter without a visa, as long as they stay for less than 90 days.

Getting around Oslo boasts one of the best public transportation systems in Europe, with buses, trams, subways (t-bane), ferries and local trains servicing the city. The Oslo Pass is sold at the tourist office and is a great way to cut transport costs. All public transport within the city limits is free (excluding late-night buses), and other perks include tour and restaurant discounts, and entry to the majority of the city’s museums. Website: www.visitoslo.com

Weather Summer temperatures in Oslo are pleasant, with frequent hot spells, and plenty of long sunny days. Winter averages between -7°C and -1°C, and snow is plentiful, making the city a great winter sports venue. There is great variation in daylight hours between seasons, with summer enjoying 18 hours of daylight and winter a mere 6 hours.

Holidays January 1 (New Year’s Day), March 20 (Palm Sunday), March 24 (Maundy Thursday), March 25 (Good Friday), March 27 & 28 (Easter), May 1 (International Worker’s Day), May 15 & 16 (Whit Sunday & Monday) May 17 (Constitution Day), December 25 (Christmas Day), December 26 (Boxing Day).

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The Essentials Time difference: GMT + 1 Language: Norwegian Electrical current/ plugs: Electrical current is 230 volts; 50Hz. Round two-pin plugs are used Water: Tap water is safe to drink in Oslo. Politics: Takes place in the framework of a parliamentary representative democratic constitutional monarchy. Power is exercised by the King’s council, the cabinet, and led by the Prime Minister of Norway.

Religion: In 2012, the government separated from the church, leaving Norway without an official religion. Before this, almost 85% of Norwegians were part of the national church, even though most were (and still are) nonbelievers.

Money Currency: The currency in Norway is the Norwegian kroner (NKR), 1 krone = 100 øre. Notes are issued in denominations of 50, 100, 200, 500, and 1,000. Coins are issued in denominations of 50 øre, 1 krone, and 5, 10, and 20 kroner. ATM’s are widely available across the city. Credit Cards: Accepted in almost all hotels, restaurants and shops. Traveller’s cheques: Are exchangeable in all Oslo banks.

Points of interest • Engebret Café: Munch and Ibsen used to dine in this lovely, lowbeamed building in the old part of Oslo. Try the reindeer medallions or herb-baked cod loins in butter sauce, and leave room for the homemade rice pudding. There is outdoor seating in a cobbled square during the summer. See: www.engebret-cafe.no • Munch Museum: Housing versions of nearly all Munch’s major works, there is enormous depth here, including 1,100 paintings and sketches, 4,500 drawings, as well as the artist’s notes, letters and diaries. Adult admission costs 100 NOK, or it’s free with the Oslo Pass. See: www.munchmuseet.no • Oslo Opera House: Oslo’s landmark Opera House is undoubtedly the city’s most spectacular modern building. The roof forms pathways that enable anyone to walk over it, while frequent tours allow visitors to explore the interior. Or, book yourself a ticket for one of the world-class performances. See: www.operaen.no • Oslo Pass: The pass gives access to over 30 of Oslo’s museums and attractions, free travel on all public transport, free parking and other benefits. You can buy 24, 48 or 72 hour passes from a number of outlets. See: www.visitoslo.com/ en/activities-and-attractions/ oslo-pass/ See www.visitoslo.com/en/ for more information about visiting Oslo

Brief history of Oslo Oslo is the oldest of the three Scandinavian capitals. The first settlement appeared around 1000 CE, located just below Ekeberg Hill. Akershus Castle was built around 1300 by King Håkon V, hoping to deter the Swedish threat from the east, and around this time Oslo took over as the capital from Bergen. After the 14th-century bubonic plague wiped out half of the country’s population, Norway united with Denmark and until 1624 politics were handled from Copenhagen. Oslo slipped into obscurity and after a devastating fire in 1624, the city burnt to the ground. It was resurrected by King Christian IV, who rebuilt on a more defendable location and renamed it Kristiania, after his modest self. In 1814 Norway was ceded from Denmark to Sweden, who unified the two countries under Swedish rule, although Parliament was allowed to continue. In 1905, the union was finally dissolved, and the stage was set for Kristiania to flourish as Norway’s capital. It then reverted to its original name, Oslo, in 1925.

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TRAVELLER’S TALES

Barnaby Rogerson Insider stories of the hidden art collections of Iran

t had been five years in the planning, this fortnight-long tour of Iran. But it had been worth the wait, in order to be escorted around this fascinating country by Sylvie Franquet, a friend who knew it well and loved it passionately. Our party of a dozen travellers included five writers, four publishers, three gallerists, two artists and just one listener. We had thrice daily flourishes of poetry from our guide, to amplify the landscape with sonnets from Hafiz. The gallerists in our party were more professionally reserved by nature, but fortunately not silent, so over the fortnight of travelling together we heard fascinating flickers of contemporary arthistory. We were told how the art collection for the Empress Farah had been started with great secrecy and stealth, but then rapidly snowballed. For Farah, like the Empress Catherine the Great before, moved from buying single masterpieces to securing whole collections, in the dizzy years between the oil price boom of 1974 and the revolution of 1979. But unlike the celebrated images of priceless bottles of claret being poured down the drain, televised to the world during the Revolution, her collection of modern art managed to survive. It was mothballed as just another instance of western decadence imported by the Shah’s regime, a piece of ‘West-Toxification’. But the collection was never damaged, protected by diligent custodians who used an immaculately itemised register, including all the original prices paid, in their armoury of bureaucratic defences. No one doubted that the Empress had ended up paying top dollar at the auction houses in the late 70’s, but her collection of paintings by Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon, Kandinsky and Rothko with sculptures by Moore, Giacometti and Magritte had been bought with a keen and discerning eye. Unseen for the first 20 years after the Revolution, a tiny fraction of the collection was put up on show in 1999, then taken down again, then opened again. At times this had elements of a French farce, such as when Francis Bacon’s butcher-like analysis of male

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nudes was the star canvas at an official opening ceremony, but had been sent back to the basement before the end of the evening. Indeed the museum of modern art could be watched like a political barometer that chronicled the seesaw of Iranian political life, as conservatives and reformers took over the driving seat, and revealed their different attitudes through the exhibition of western art. The doors are now wide open, and there are even talks of loan agreements to allow for foreign exhibitions, but whatever their political hue, the various governments of Iran have been impressively united around one principle. The collection of modern art is the property of the nation and is not for sale.

At times this had elements of a French farce, such as when Francis Bacon’s butcher-like analysis of male nudes was the star canvas at an official opening ceremony, but had been sent back to the basement before the end of the evening But for every rule there has to be an exception, especially if it involves London-based Oliver Hoare, the James Bond of Islamic Art dealers. Mr Hoare is a man of legendary charm, energy and enthusiasm who knows both collecting Sultans and diffident art scholars, intellectual princesses and a heady cocktail of international art dealers. So, after three years of tentative talks and secret negotiations, a modest van driven by Oliver Hoare backs up against the private jet of the President of Iran on the tarmac of Vienna airport. Two packages are exchanged. One is immediately sent west into neutral Switzerland, out of reach of any interfering US government agents. The other was flown straight back to Tehran. It is like a scene lifted straight out of the film The Third Man, but for real, for William de Kooning’s Woman

III had been swopped for the Houghton Shahnameh, both nominally valued at 13 million dollars, though a nought could, and soon would be added to the price-tag of one of these works. But Iran had done well. The Tehran Museum of Modern Art had exchanged an unshowable female nude from its basement in order to reclaim a central piece of its literary and artistic history. For the so-called Houghton Shahnameh had been commissioned by Shah Ismail himself as a gift to his son and eventual heir, Shah Tahmasp. It took the artists of the Safavid court 20 years to create the 258 painted illuminations with which this edition of the Shahnameh was originally ornamented. To those unfamiliar with Ferdowsi’s Shahmaneh, it is nothing less than the Iranian Iliad and Odyssey. The only sadness in this tale, is that one of the members of the Houghton family who had owned this treasure for some 40 years, had broken the book up and sold off half the illuminations (albeit largely to New York’s Metropolitan Museum). The Shahnameh had passed into the hands of the Ottoman Sultan Selim II and then somewhat mysteriously passed from out of the Topkapi palace collection into the hands of Baron Edmund de Rothschild at the turn of the century. But none of these owners had damaged so much as a page over the previous 400 years. On a positive note, the entire text has survived and is now back in its homeland with around half of its original illuminations. Our interest in the museums of Tehran was more than a little picqued by these insider stories. But as luck was to have it, we were to be offered up an even greater treat. We had just heard that the Islamic Era galleries of the National Museum of Iran, which had been mysteriously closed for decades, had just been opened a few weeks before our arrival. They had been opened without fanfare and without an international press corps in attendance. But upstairs, we found the most magnificent collection of Islamic art in the world, beautifully arranged over two floors and modestly annotated with scholarly notes and maps. We were alone apart from the curators, who seemed delighted at our enthusiasm. 31

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INTREPID TRAVELLER

Freya Stark

....was born with a love of travelling and spent over 70 years exploring the Middle East and writing over 24 books about her adventures. Joshua J. Mark tells her remarkable story

f it can be said that there are two types of people in the world, the surest demarcation would be that there are those who direct their lives and those who allow life to direct them. To direct your life you have to live consciously, unafraid, and recognize all the possibilities a life offers. If you choose this route then you are among those who, to use Hemingway’s phrase, ‘live their lives all the way up’, who draw the world’s attention and make such an impression outside their immediate sphere that they are impossible to ignore in life or forget after their passing. Among the more notable of this type is Freya Stark (18931993) who epitomizes an intrepid traveller in every regard and who left her mark on the world through the books and letters she wrote on her travels. One of Stark’s biographers, Jane Fletcher Geniesse, writes, ‘Freya never lost a rapturous sense that the earth and everything on it were marvellous. ‘The word ecstasy is always related to some sort of discovery’, she once wrote, ‘a novelty to the sense or spirit, and it is in search of this word that in love, in religion, in art or in travel, the adventurous are ready to face the unknown’.’ Stark’s travels throughout her life were driven by this sense of wonder, the thrill of discovery, and the need to share her ecstatic vision with others.

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Early life Freya Stark was born 31 January 1893 in Paris where her bohemian parents, Robert and Flora, were living while they studied painting. She had a younger sister, Vera, and the two children spent their early years moving about according to their parents’ whims. She lived in Devon, England, in a house her father (who may

not have been her biological parent) built, where she would go to sleep in a bed her mother had painted with images of tall sailing ships, but spent much of her childhood between England and Italy. Her parents had an unhappy marriage which ended when Flora ran off in 1903

with the young Italian Count Mario di Roascio and took the girls with her. She grew up in Dronero, Italy where her mother and live-in boyfriend ran a carpet factory. There was little to do in the town and the girls were given only the most rudimentary education by the nuns who lived nearby. Stark took to reading early and, when she was nine, was given a translation of One Thousand and One Nights which instantly entranced her and turned her thoughts to Arabia and all the magical places it seemed to offer. Shortly before her 13th birthday, while visiting her mother’s factory, her hair was caught in a machine which tore open her scalp and ripped off her right ear. She had to endure painful skin grafts to repair her face and scalp and always thought of herself as disfigured afterwards. She took solace in books and the worlds they opened up for her and dreamed of leaving Dronero behind, but she had no resources for travel. Travel was in her blood and she later wrote how ‘There is a certain madness comes over one at the mere sight of a good map’ but she did not have the means for even a short trip, much less the grand adventures she dreamed of. In 1912 she was allowed by her parents to leave Italy to attend college in London where she concentrated her studies on languages (she would

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INTREPID TRAVELLER

The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one will be surprised

Left: A young Freya Above: Freya at her home in Asolo

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eventually be fluent in English, Italian, French, Arabic, and Persian). When World War I broke out in 1914 she returned home and served with the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) as a nurse on the Italian front caring for the wounded. After the war she began making plans to travel to the east. She knew she had to learn Arabic, however, in order to experience the culture completely. The only man who could teach her the language lived many miles away but this was no obstacle; twice a week Stark walked an hour to the train which took her to San Remo and then walked another two miles to her teacher’s home. Before long, she was reading the Quran in its original language. She had been given a sum of money by her father in England which she had turned to a profit through careful investments which generated about three hundred pounds a year. Against the advice of her banker, she invested almost

all of what she had in an enterprise both her father and the banker considered too risky: the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway. Stark’s instincts paid off, however, as the returns from her investment were significant enough to finally allow her to travel. The banker was so impressed by her confidence, he later told her, the whole staff invested following her example and made handsome returns. Stark was not interested in making money for the sake of money, though; she only wanted the money to travel. She would later write, ‘I have found that one can nearly always do what one set out for, if it is only one thing at a time.’ Still, she continued her life in Dronero helping her mother and sister earn a living on the small farm they kept on the property. In a strange turn of events which friends and acquaintances found scandalous, her sister Vera wound up marrying Count di Roascio who had been their mother’s lover. Her biographers disagree on whether Stark felt held back in her travel plans by

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Vera and also on whether Vera’s marriage was a tragic mistake, which Stark felt sorry for, or a happy match she envied. According to Stark’s autobiography, however, she felt sorry for her sister in accepting the marriage proposal, claiming her sister ‘never knew the radiance [of self-determination] which alone makes life worth living’ and was eager to escape the kind of trap she felt their mother had led Vera into. When Vera and the count were married, Flora refused to quit the residence and retained her position as head of the household, relegating Vera to the status of a kind of servant in her own home. Vera died of a miscarriage in 1926 and Stark, afraid her mother would somehow trap her in the same kind of prison her sister had died in, booked a

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ship to Lebanon and left Italy behind a year later in 1927. She would return to Italy to look after her mother and her niece but she was finally free to travel as she wished.

Travelling at last She found the people of Beirut warm and welcoming, claiming this was most likely because she had come ‘neither to improve nor rob’ them. All she was interested in was continuing her study of Arabic and travel for the sake of travel. Throughout her life she was prone to illness and arrived in the city in poor health. She quickly improved in the warm climate, however, and began to explore the area as soon as she was able, travelling through Lebanon to Syria. Syria at this time was

under the control of the French who brutally suppressed the native Druse and severely restricted travel. Stark refused to be controlled by what she saw as arbitrary laws enacted by an illegal occupying force and hired a Druse guide to lead her and her friend, Venetia Buddicom, from Damascus to explore the area. They were quickly arrested by the French and detained for three days but, with her typical wit and charisma, Stark charmed the French soldiers so completely, in her fluent French, that the two women - and, to a lesser degree, their guide - were treated more as guests of the compound than prisoners. Having been detained by the French made her all the more welcome to the Druse she later met and she was able to

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INTREPID TRAVELLER

Left: Al Mukulla 1934, gateway port to Yemen (Image: Stark-SANeg-1935-006-022 Middle East Centre Archive, St Anthony’s College, Oxford University) Right, top: Muski Yard, Cairo, 1961 (Image: StarkAlb-Egypt-008, Middle East Centre Archive, St Anthony’s College, Oxford University) Right, bottom: Freya with her sister Vera and mother in the garden of their home at Asolo, Italy. (Image: Asolo Villa)

gain insights into the people and their culture which would have been difficult or impossible otherwise. In this instance, as in many others, Stark was able to turn an unpleasant event to her advantage and make friends of potential adversaries. Her first article was published in 1928 (under the name Tharaya, Arabic for ‘She Who Illuminates the World’) and her first book, Baghdad Sketches, in 1933 (a more complete version to come in 1937) which was an account of her explorations in Iraq. Her second, The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Tales (1934), related her experiences in Iran in 1929 and, especially, in the remote Elburz Mountains where she visited the castle of the cult of the Hassassin. Before she had left, she read everything she could find on the mountain range, especially the Travels of Marco Polo, to be able to recognise landmarks along the way and locate her final destination. To reach the mountains she had only some sketch maps supplied by her friend Captain Vyvyan Holt (the man who had replaced Gertrude Bell as Britain’s Oriental Secretary) whom she’d met earlier through mutual acquaintances. Along with these rough maps she also had the help of two guides who had no idea where the Rock of Alamut, the assassin’s castle, was located as no one ever had any cause to visit it. Stark was unconcerned; for her, reaching the castle was not as important as the adventure of getting there. She waded through rushing streams, passed through fields thick with wild flowers, slept in a thin tent under mosquito netting with her guides on either side, and climbed up to 10,250 feet (3,124 metres) to survey ‘the sweep of the entire mountain range to the Caspian mists’. She instantly recognised that the official maps were wrong, to the extent that the mountain range on the map

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was on the wrong side of the valley, and promptly corrected them. When she returned from her travels with the revised maps, Captain Holt and his colleagues commended her on her ‘brave work’ and she would eventually be awarded the Founder’s Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society for her contributions.

Life and death

Above: Square at al-Qatn, Yemen, 1934 (Image: Stark-SA-Neg -1935-016-032, Middle East Centre Archive, St Anthony’s College, Oxford University) Left: Isfahan street scene, Iran (Image: Stark-AlbPersia-027, Middle East Centre Archive, St Anthony’s College, Oxford University)

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Throughout the 1930s, Stark continued to travel, write and publish. Her works were immensely popular and translated into a number of languages. She travelled through Luristan, photographing and talking with the Lurs, a culture virtually unknown to the outside world at that time. She heard from some of them of a great treasure of gold, statuary, and rare gems hidden in a cave outside of the city of Nihavend and set out to find it with a guide who, like her earlier guides, had no knowledge of the cave or how to find it. She separated from her guide to search alone but was turned back by local police. Pursuing what she called ‘a lovely blank on the map’ she travelled to Masanderan on the Caspian Sea to fill in that blank for herself. She was struck along the way with dysentery and malaria and would have

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INTREPID TRAVELLER

One life is an absurdly small allowance

Above: Freya Stark in Arab dress, 1936. (The John Murray Collection) Overleaf: Desert picnic in Egypt: Air Marshal G. Longmore; friend Pamela Hore-Ruthven and Stark, 1941 (Image: StarkAlb-Egypt-101, Middle East Centre Archive, St Anthony’s College, Oxford University) Freya Stark by Antonio Foscari

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died if not for the intervention of a local woman who was a healer. Once back on her feet, she set out for Shabwa in Yemen, an ancient trade centre and oasis famously associated with frankincense. Unlike her earlier expedition to Alamut, no European had ever visited Shabwa. She travelled this time with two female archaeologists and reached the city of Shibam, ‘the oldest skyscraper city in the world’ before, one by one, they fell ill with fever. Stark had contracted the measles shortly before leaving and now became seriously ill. She had to be airlifted to the hospital facilities in Aden by the RAF, an event which quickly became the news of the day when the media learned that the famous explorer and author Freya Stark had only barely cheated death. Her books were so popular not just because of the exotic subject matter but because of her unique voice. The narrative voice of Stark’s works is alive with experience and wonder as she recounts her travels to ancient sites and natural wonders but, like many of the best travel writers, her greatest gift is in describing the most common-place moments in her travels: an evening talking around the fire, the time a man came to her asking for

medicine for his sick wife, the scent of the cool morning breeze before starting off into a day trekking across the desert, or a moment of silence alone gazing across a landscape of flowers, hills, and streams at the distant mountains. In addition to these kinds of reflections and sketches of everyday life and the people she encountered, Stark routinely condemned western interference in the politics of the region but not so much as to alienate her audience. Her commentary on the western mandates in the region were given through her eye-witness accounts of the French using Druse labour for their building projects, to give only one example, without elaborating on the injustice of enslaving an indigenous people for one’s own ends. She trusted her audience to recognise the impropriety on their own.

The next chapter When World War II began, Stark volunteered for the British Middle East Propaganda Section of the Ministry of Information and slipped into Yemen with a projector and a few cans of film. Her intent was to keep Yemen from siding with the Nazi cause and since, as a woman, she had free access to the harems of the rulers, she thought that by showing her propaganda films to the ladies of the court, she could influence the men in control. Her plan worked and Yemen remained neutral, denying the Nazis a strategic ground from which they’d hoped to launch attacks. She then formed the Brotherhood of Freedom, a network of united British and Arab nationals who spread the ideals of personal freedom and equality and whose numbers rose to 40,000 members. The Brotherhood of Freedom is generally considered instrumental in solidifying Egyptian and Arab loyalty to the allied cause. Stark travelled

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There is a certain madness [that]comes over one at the mere sight of a good map extensively throughout the Middle East at this time as part of her job and more than once relied on her cleverness, and the male perception of women, to get to where she wanted to go or get out of trouble. A famous example of this happened in April of 1941 when the government of Iraq allied itself with the Nazi cause. Stark had been in Tehran and was travelling back to the British Embassy in Baghdad when she was arrested at the border between Iran and Iraq. British citizens were no longer allowed free travel, she was told, and she would be detained. She was imprisoned in the railroad rest house while her guards decided how best to deal with her and,

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listening to their conversations, she learned others in her position had been sent to prison camps. Stark instantly conjured up all her charm and sweet-talked her guard into bringing her tea. When it was brought, he could not resist her invitation to share some with her and sit awhile in conversation. Stark asked his help with a serious problem which, as a refined man she said, she knew he would be able to appreciate: it was simply impossible for her, as a lady, to remain in their custody without a proper ladies’ maid. Her guard did not immediately relent but Stark kept at him, persistently, flattering him as a civilised man who surely understood how

weak and incapable women were and what his obligation, as a gentleman of culture, called on him to do. The guard set her free and arranged for her trip by train to Baghdad, where she then seems to have cajoled her way into a horse-drawn carriage which brought her to the British Embassy. She was the last person admitted to the embassy before the Siege of Baghdad began. In reflecting on the many moments throughout her life she had managed to get her way by playing the role of the helpless damsel, Stark wrote, ‘The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one will be surprised.’

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In 1943, Stark was taken out of the Middle East and sent on a speaking tour to the United States. Her primary goal was to win support for Britain’s new policy of limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine. This was especially difficult in light of the deaths of over 700 Romanian Jews aboard the ship Struma which was denied entry to Palestine by the British authorities in 1942 and was then sunk by a Soviet submarine. The Americans were sympathetic to the cause of Jewish immigration and Stark’s tour failed to win support. After the United States’ excursion she returned to Italy to a cottage in Asolo she had inherited from Henry Young, an old family friend, many years before. She used her Italian cottage as a home base from which to launch her travels after the war. She married a man named Stewart Perowne in 1947 but they quickly separated (never divorced) as they found themselves more suitable as friends than lovers. In 1951, at the age of 58, she travelled through Greece, Turkey and Syria. She was away from home most of the time for the next 14 years. In her seventies, she travelled to China and when she was 76 made a tour of some the more remote areas of Afghanistan. In the 1970s she explored Nepal on the back of a pony and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1972. She lived in her small cottage in Asolo, writing

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her books (she would publish over two dozen) and entertaining guests whenever she was not travelling. In 1984 the town awarded her the key to the city as their most illustrious citizen. She continued to write and receive visitors for the next nine years until her death on 9 May 1993, a few months past her 100th birthday. In a letter to a friend in 1929, Stark wrote, ‘One life is an absurdly small allowance’ but, as with everything handed to her, she took what she had been given and turned it to her advantage. She very much wanted to be loved, and to be married (she even called herself Mrs. Stark’ after her separation from Perowne) but came to understand she could not have everything and a conventional life would have meant settling for less than her ideal. Critics have pointed out that Stark’s actual achievements as an explorer were technically minimal: she was not the first European to visit or write about the Elburz mountains (though she corrected earlier maps and gave a more comprehensive account), she was prevented from reaching Shabwa by illness, was denied access to Luristan’s treasures by authorities and, in a number of other instances, failed in her immediate objectives. She succeeded, however, in conveying the vitality of the region and the people and in leaving behind a chronicle of the Middle East in the first part of the 20th century in a voice

which still holds all the charm and vigour which made her famous while she lived. In every respect, Freya Stark lived her life completely through the allowance she was given - the whole 100 years of it - and even won the love she desired through her work which touched the lives of so many around the world and continues to do so today.

Further reading: • Traveller’s Prelude, Beyond Euphrates, The Coast of Incense, Dust in the Lion’s Paw Autobiographies by Freya Stark • Geniesse, J.F.; Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark; Modern Library 2001 • Stark,F.:, The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Tales, Modern Library 2001 • Stark, F.: Alexander’s Path: From Caria to Cilicia, Pimlico 1984

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Nick Danziger

INTERVIEW WITH...

Nick Danziger being Nick Danziger is interviewed at the Imperial War Museum for Radio 4â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Front Row

Award winning author, photographer and documentary maker, the extraordinary Nick Danziger is said to spend his life speaking for the disadvantaged and dispossessed. Matilda Hickson meets him as his new exhibition opens at the Imperial War Museum

Interview with... Nick Danziger 40

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Timeless Travels â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2016

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Nick Danziger

INTERVIEW WITH...

ick Danziger thought he was going to be an artist and graduated with an MA in Fine Art from the Chelsea school of Art. But aged 24 he travelled on foot from Turkey through Afghanistan to China, following ancient trade routes and chronicled his adventures in his first best-selling book, Danziger’s Travels. He has since published a further nine books and has travelled the world extensively taking photographs and making documentary films – mostly about the disadvantaged and dispossessed. Since his first journey to Afghanistan, he has returned many times and in 2001 he adopted three Afghan children to save them from the Taliban. He married 12 years ago and is now father to a further three children. He also gives talks in schools, runs workshops and is the summer school program director for Cinema, Human Rights and Advocacy.

when I was 12 or 13. I was always keen to travel and I suppose there were a couple of times when I was even younger than that when I would say to my parents, ‘I’m going off now’. But I was quite scared and didn’t go far from home and they were walking treks. But I loved the whole idea of travel and after reading the adventures of Tintin and probably because I was inspired by art and painting, Paris seemed the natural place to go. I told my parents I was going for a week and they thought it was like my previous treks ie. he doesn’t really go very far. But off I went For the first few days I stayed in a guest house, but then my money ran out and I slept rough. And that in a little way opened my eyes up to a very different way of life as I had come from a privileged background. I ended up sleeping in parks, but I used to hide, and I didn’t sleep well as I was worried about sleeping rough. I

You have travelled extensively. Is there any country that you have yet to visit? There are a lot For example, this year I have just visited the Ivory Coast for the first time and I might be going to Laos, so those are new countries. I’ve gone to a huge amount of countries but I don’t usually see them as other people see them. That is because I’m often doing difficult stories and I see one side of life or I see several sides of life but I only get involved in the areas I’m photographing. So I might go to Southern India and spend a week there but not get to a temple as the people I’m working with take up all my time.

And maybe that is why I keep going back, I feel that their voice needs to be heard. We live in a world today where [such suffering] just shouldn’t happen...

Do you do much travelling for pleasure? I have a very large family and for the first time we did go on a big trip last year to Kenya. And it was truly amazing We didn’t see any foreigners from the moment we left the airport to the day we came back, which was about ten days. I’m really keen for my kids to see other worlds. Very occasionally one will travel with me. The next family trip is to Japan. How old are your youngest children? I have ten-year-old twins, Samuel and Freya and May who is 12. I am very keen for them to learn languages so May is learning Russian and the two younger ones want to learn Arabic. What do you think your best adventure was in the early years? Probably the very first one, going to Paris, Timeless Travels • Spring 2016

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survived the week as I used to sketch and people would see this kid and give me money for my work. My parents stopped all my pocket money when I returned But when I got to 16 my dad gave me £60 for a summer holiday. And when I asked how I was to manage on such a small amount he said ‘if you’ve managed on nothing, you’ll do very well on 60 ’ Was there a particularly painting that initiated that spark of interest in art? Originally I was very taken with Salvador Dali and I wanted my name changed to Nicholas Da Lee Danziger - my middle name is Lee. When I used to travel around Europe on my own at a very young age it was my dream to visit his museum, but I’ve never got there. So I was interested in surrealism and inspired by it. And then my work became very abstract and mathematical. My work was shown at the Robert Fraser gallery in Cork Street

[London] and in fact there is a picture in a gallery in Piccadilly at the moment – an early work I still love art and I’m frustrated that I don’t paint. I go into museums and I see things and my hands kind of itch. But I suppose photography helps me through that. Why were the ‘Women in War’ films made? Was it to fundraise? They weren’t made for fundraising. I do have two charities that I work with but usually what I am interested in is advocacy – bringing things to light. For life to change – these are very complex issues and if fundraising happens because the stories are strong – great, but the organisations usually aren’t asking me to use photography as a fundraiser. So those films, currently on at the Imperial War Museum, are timeless and there is a message at the end of each film. In the Mah Bibi one, it’s that girls should be allowed to have a childhood. All of the women featured are protected by the Geneva Conventions, by law, and what you see and what you have watched shouldn’t exist – they are protected by international humanitarian law. But those laws are not adhered to. And it isn’t easy doing these projects. Sometimes I’m in tears. You first photographed the women in 2001 and then you went back and tried to track them all down ten years later. Did you manage to find them all again I found all but one of the women - I couldn’t find out what happened to Mah Bibi. I think she is probably dead, and possibly died in childbirth as she was married and so that is my presumption, that it was in childbirth. Half the girls are married in many countries by the time they are 15 – which is not right as they end up pregnant and their bodies are not ready for that. So that is why I want to keep doing what I do. What can we do to help these women? In the past when I gave talks there was a sense of powerlessness, but now I think it is very important to say ‘we can make a difference, we can change things’. I lead a lot of workshops now and I run a summer school: Cinema, Human Rights and Advocacy and I say ‘don’t just show documents to people, give them three concrete actions that they can do to make a difference.’ That is so important - people can truly make a difference. 41

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Nick Danziger Mah Bibi, Afghanistan, 2001

How do you cope with all the really difficult things that you see doing your assignments? I think I really admire what they [the subjects of his photographs do and how they survive – it is really, really humbling. And maybe that is why I keep going back, I feel that their voice should be heard. We live in a world today where such suffering just shouldn’t happen. We are focussed on the environment, but we’re not focussed on people. If we can’t eliminate extreme poverty, how are we ever to sort the environment out? And maybe dealing with it the suffering , is by not dealing with it. We are increasingly obsessed with this celebrity culture and lifestyle, and if I go into schools and speak to school kids, and ask who their heroes are, nearly all of them say sports people, which I find quite sad. Occasionally someone will say ‘my dad or my mum’ which is fantastic. Why do you keep doing this type of work? I’m passionate that these stories get told and yes, they are disturbing. On one story I nearly gave up as the person was so upset. Sometimes I used to think it was therapeutic for people to off-load their traumas. But I’m not a psychologist and I regret now that I’m not trained. But I think not to give them the voice, that is wrong too. The people I’m talking about are a sizeable section of our global population and that is why I’m passionate to continue what I do. I didn’t start as a photographer and so if I can’t do what I 42

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Image: © Nick Danziger/nbpictures.com

INTERVIEW WITH...

What I am interested in is advocacy - bringing things to light. For life to change want to do in photography then I would give it up. And when I give talks I get quite emotional. You ask how I cope - when I go to movies I tend to cry a lot, whether it be a happy movie or a sad one So I probably haven’t worked through it and I think that must be linked to what I do. You say that the treatment of women in Afghanistan is not due to religion but to culture. Is that correct? Yes, and it is culture, but for less than half of the population because it is the men’s culture, not the women’s. It is changing and I could not do this type of work if I didn’t believe change is possible. And I think what we in the West have to understand is while we might try and drive the agenda, change takes time and the bigger the gap [between cultures] the more time you need. We want things to happen overnight. The Afghans said to the Americans ‘you have the watches but we have the time’ and it really is true. Unfortunately corruption has so permeated those societies that it is not just the ballot box that is going to change society for them.

In 1989 Nick had found 16 children living in a mental hospital outside Kabul and raised funds to start an orphanage to get them out of that unhealthy environment. Can you tell a little more about what happened to the orphanage you set up in Kabul and your adoption of the three Afghan children? It eventually closed after two and a half years because the deeply conservative religious government didn’t feel that orphaned children should be in independent orphanages. The children were moved to a government orphanage where the conditions were appalling but I eventually managed to get them out. The girls were living three to a single bed and they weren’t allowed off the third floor of the orphanage because the boys were on the floors below. I continued to be in touch with the children that had been in the orphanage I had set up. It was a very long, complicated story, but in the end when the Taliban took power in Kabul I just thought I couldn’t leave the girls behind because I knew what was happening to orphan girls – so there was no choice or decision. They had always wanted me to take them home, but I had no home, wife or car – it was impossible Whenever I went back to Afghanistan, I would take them on holidays or excursions so that was also something that people didn’t see when I adopted them – the fact that I had known them for eight years. Why did you decide to settle in Monaco with the children? In those days I was a single parent and Britain did not recognise single parenthood for adoption. Lots of European countries came forward but there was a woman in Monaco who ran a charity who had wanted to help with the orphanage and we stayed in touch. I had initially said no to Monaco, but she encouraged me to bring the kids to Monaco and then I thought ‘why not?’ And I have to say, when the kids were growing up, the government was incredibly supportive – and although I had qualms about it initially, it has been fantastic. They couldn’t read or write when they arrived aged 10, 11 and 13 and now they are fluent in three languages. So it just shows what can happen if someone is given an opportunity.

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Nick Danziger

INTERVIEW WITH...

How do you decide what you are going to work on Do you follow a project or are you commissioned? I think it is a bit of both. Many of the stories I want to do, I am in some way connected to. Or I might be going over territory that I have already covered, as I think that is important. All too often you take a picture and move on. Sometimes it is someone coming to me with a project , but even now, after ten books being published, I still have to crowd fund [for certain projects . The latest book may have found a publisher but it has become much more of a collective process and I’m surprised at how many people are coming forward and saying ‘what is it you want to do ’ That particular project was helped by Eleven Women Facing War is the new exhibition by Nick Danziger at the Imperial War Museum from the 4th February – 24 April 2016. The exhibition is the first UK showing of photographs and film telling the stories of 11 women in different conflict zones during the first decade of the 21st century. In 2001, Nick photographed 11 women in the world’s major conflict zones for an International Committee of the Red Cross to document the specific needs of women facing war. Ten years later he set out to find each one and learn what had become of their lives. www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-london

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numerous foundations and one of them is also helping me with my Cinema, Human Rights and Advocacy workshops. So I try and do what I can with people that support me and then sometimes those relationships develop. I enjoy going into schools a lot because many kids in western Europe aren’t aware that people live without the basics and I show them films with people having to walk 14 km a day to collect water and how people live without electricity. Hopefully it is inspiring and kids will think ‘wow’. I ask if they think they have toys, and they say no, so I show them how they make a board game from cardboard and bottle tops and how cool that is. What would you say your greatest achievement is? If anything I look at all the frustrations and wonder at what I could have done better. I couldn’t do what I do without a huge team of people and support and I think that is really important, because often people just think of you as the photographer who has taken the image. But in a lot of my work now I have researchers who help me find the stories, and there are the people who I work with in the different countries. And I couldn’t do without their help as I’m often visiting difficult neighbourhoods. But I’m chuffed to have a museum exhibition at places like the National Portrait Gallery or the Imperial War Museum. I feel it is recognition and that people care about what I am doing. It is really hard now to publish this type of work that I do and so it shows me that for all the pain and difficulty, people are

interested. Magazines generally won’t commission this type of work any more – they say it is too depressing and hard. Like the story of Mariatu from Sierra Leone, the girl who had her hands amputated -– has rebuilt her life and wants to become a social worker and is now living in Canada. She wants to return to Sierra Leone to help girls who have been abused, so for me those stories are amazing and inspiring. Tell us something we don’t know about Nick Danziger? I do get really nervous when I travel It probably dates from my childhood exploits. Even last weekend when I was in Abidjan visiting a very difficult neighbourhood, I still get nervous. What’s next for you? I am doing a project on substance abuse and how it affects society on every level. I’m off to Laos and the Ivory Coast next week but have been documenting how it affects individuals, families and the criminality that it engenders. To read more about Nick and his work see www.nickdanziger.com and www.chra.ie for more information about Cinema, Human Rights and Advocacy To support Nick’s latest project visit: www.unbound. co.uk/books/ another-life.

Mariatu, Sierra Leone, 2001

Image: © Nick Danziger/nbpictures.com

You have been visiting Afghanistan for over 30 years. Do you feel that things are changing for the better there? Yes. Roads have been built, schools too, which are being used, but the level of violence has actually increased in some areas rather than decreasing. Afghanistan is complicated to talk about because there are so many different areas and it is like a panoply of different countries, but overall it is not very positive and corruption has been one of the major problems. When the Taliban originally took Kabul, most Kabul citizens were very positive as they thought it would stop corruption and criminality but it didn’t. The old saying of ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ is true. And I think it is the case sadly in a lot of these countries when state structures don’t exist or are broken, then it is free rein for those who make a lot of money from criminal activities.

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BOOK REVIEW

the world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. Saint Augustine The Villa Ariadne DILYS POWELL

The Common Stream

Against a Peacock Sky Two years in the life of a Nepalese village

MONICA CONNELL

Dinner of Herbs

Village Life in Turkey in the 1960s

ROWLAND PARKER

The Innocent Anthropologist Notes from a Mud Hut

NIGEL BARLEY

CARLA GRISSMANN

Travels on my Elephant MARK SHAND

keeping classic travel literature alive www.travelbooks.co.uk 44

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Reading the Maya Glyphs M.D. Coe & M. van Stone

The Secret of the Cathars Michael Hillier

Thames & Hudson Published: 4 January 2016 Price: £12.95

Matador Published: November 2015 Price: £7.99

he Maya hieroglyphic script is the only known writing system of the Americas in the pre-Columbian era. With approximately 800 signs, the Maya glyphs can appear daunting to any student or traveller but Reading the Maya Glyphs can help you to decipher these signs even if you are an absolute beginner. The guide is split into different sections such as time and calendar, royal lives and rituals, scribes and artists or the supernatural world. Thus not only are you learning to translate the glyphs, but you are also finding out more about the world of the Maya people. Whether you’re visiting the great Maya sites of Mexico and Central America, or visiting museums with Mayan artefacts, this guide will enhance your visit by allowing you to try and enter the Mayan world by actually reading their ancient script. Coe is an international authority in Maya studies and Mark Van Stone is the world’s leading interpreter of Maya calligraphic art. This second edition includes the latest discoveries in hieroglyphic research and is a musthave read for anyone who is interested in the Maya world.

his book has it all – the hunt for secret treasure, a beautiful and intelligent archaeologist as the lead character, a dashing hero and not one set of villains but two, one of which is the Catholic Church intent on keeping any discoveries secret. Philips Sinclair’s grandmother has recently died and leaves him a legacy of the translated journal of his ancient ancestor, who was one of the four Cathar perfecti who escaped from the castle of Montségur with the ‘treasure of the Cathars’ strapped to his back – a treasure which has never been found. Meanwhile famous young French archaeologist Jaqueline Blontard has arrived at le Bézu to start excavations as part of her new television series about the Albigensian Crusade. She believes her team will have the summer to uncover the secrets of the place before they are disturbed by the press and the authorities. This is definitely a fun read and the race to find the lost treasure before the villains guarantees it to be a page turner. After all the excitement however, could it be said that the ending was tied up too neatly and different choices should have been made? Timeless Travels • Spring 2016

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BOOK REVIEW

Sita Ram’s Painted Views of India J.P. Losty

The Sister Queens

Thames & Hudson Published: 23 November 2015 Price: £35.00

n March 1995 the British Library acquired a collection of albums formed by the marquess and marchioness of Hastings in India between 1813 and 1823. The albums contained many beautiful drawings by Indian, British and Chinese artists, but the most remarkable among them were ten albums painted by the artist Sita Ram. In 1814 Francis Rawdon (1754-1826), Lord Hastings, governor-general of India, had set out on an inspection tour from Calcutta to the Punjab, to see British possessions and to meet local Indian rulers and notables. This beautiful book is an edited version of Hasting’s journal during this 1814 journey and offers a glimpse of Indian life through the eyes of the most powerful man in India – and one of the most powerful in the world – at the time. His entourage included 220 boats alone so would have been quite a spectacle in itself. For anyone interested in Indian history, this book is a fascinating insight to the country at the time, but it is Ram’s paintings that are the real gem. They are the most wonderful record of Indian life before the ascendency of the British Raj. Not to be missed.

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Mary McGrigor

The Mediterranean in History dited by avid bulafia

In Search of Kings and Conquerors Lisa Cooper

The History Press Published: January 2016 Price: £18.99

Thames & Hudson Published: 26 October 2015 Price: £45.00

IB Tauris Published: January 2016 Price: £20.00

he history of English royalty always makes for a great story, and by choosing to view it from the perspective of two French sisters who became English queens, is a novel approach. Isabella and Catherine de Valois were daughters of King Charles VI of France who suddenly went mad in the summer of 1392. Isabella was just three at the time, and less than four years later she was married by proxy to the English King Richard II and arrived in England with a French retinue and her dolls house. Catherine was married to Henry V and is unique in history for being the daughter of a king, as well as wife, mother and grandmother of a king. Like her sister, Catherine was viewed as a bargaining chip of political turmoil, but her passionate affair with the young Owain Tudor established the entire Tudor dynasty and set in motion one of the most fascinating periods of British history. Author Mary McGrigor brings new research to the story of the sisters from both archives and poetry and tries to give a more female perspective to their story.

or over four thousand years the Mediterranean was the centre of Western civilization. Geographically, it is a whole world in miniature, an inland sea whose shores encompass every type of terrain and climate. Historically, it has been the meeting-place of the cultures of Europe, Asia and Africa, the battleground of races and nations and the focus of three great religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The Mediterranean in History chronicles the rise and fall of Empires from Greece and Rome to Mussolini and Franco. Edited by David Abulafia, Professor of Mediterranean History at the University of Cambridge, this study covers all of recorded history, incorporating recent research tools ranging from linguistics to underwater technology, and is accompanied by spectacular illustrations including aerial photography and vivid historical records. Now out in paperback this book is the only complete and up-to-date overview of one of the great areas of world history. It makes a terrific resource for students or for those just interested in the history of the region.

ertrude Bell is once again the basis for a new book and one must question if there is anything new to say. But this is refreshingly different, as author Lisa Cooper concentrates on her archaeological achievements, as witnessed by the sub title: Gertrude Bell and the Archaeology of the Middle East. As Cooper points out, much has been written about Bell and the fact that she was an archaeologist, but no one has actually looked at her achievements in this field - and whether there were actually any of note. Bell has talked of ‘playing at archaeology’ in her letters, and often refers to this aspect of her work in a light hearted way which detracts from her hard work and serious studies. Cooper explores Bell’s achievements, emphasizing the tenacious, inquisitive side of her extraordinary personality, the breadth of her knowledge and her overall contribution to the archaeology of the Middle East. Featuring many of Bell’s own photographs, this is an important look at one of the many facets of Bell’s remarkable life and makes a thoroughly interesting and engaging read. 45

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MUSEUM FOCUS

The Frick Collection in New York is much more than a collection of paintings. Matilda Hickson finds out how it all began and what it is today

he stunning Frick Collection in New York was started by Henry Clay Frick, the second child of an immigrant farmer who married the daughter of a flour merchant and whisky distiller. In March 1871, he invested with a cousin in low-priced coking fields and to build 50 coke ovens. Within a decade, H.C. Frick Coke Company would operate over 1000 working overs and produce almost 80% of the coke used by Pittsburgh’s growing iron and steel industries. Having got involved with the steel industry and the railways, in 1901 following a $30 settlement, Frick moved to New York and became involved with the United States Steel Corporation. It was noted at the time that he was the largest individual railway stockholder in the world. Frick had always had an interest in art and had begun to collect paintings seriously in his late forties. Between 1895 and 1900 he acquired more than 90 pictures, all contemporary works. However once in New York his priorities changed and he became interested in Old Masters, and specially in the 17th-century Dutch and Flemish

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schools, British portraiture and landscape of the 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1901 he acquired his first Vermeer, Girl Interrupted at Her Music, for $26,000. In 1906, a year after settling in New York, he acquired the Lenox Library building and site on Fifth Avenue between 70th and 71st streets where he would eventually build his own home. The brief for his home to architects Carrère and Hastings, was to provide a ‘comfortable, well arranged house, simple, in good taste and not ostentatious’. It was also his plan to use the house one day as a museum. In 1914 he visited London and Paris, purchasing objects for the house including a large suite of 18th-century Gobelins tapestry furniture from Chatsworth House for just over $200,000. Legendary art dealer Joseph Duveen is credited with expanding Frick’s taste beyond Old Master and 19th-century painting. The creation of his ‘palace’ on Fifth Avenue impelled its owner to consider the role that sculpture, furniture and the decorative arts might also play in the furnishing of his home and consequently, in the creation of his future museum. The death of J. Pierpoint Morgan

Above: The Garden Court at The Frick (Image: © Fiona Richards)

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MUSEUM FOCUS

Above clockwise: The West Gallery; Henry Clay Frick (Image: Library of Congress ggbain.07131. Public Domain of the USA); Anthony van Dyck Self-Portrait c. 1627–35 Etching The Fitzwilliam Museum; Francesco Laurana Beatrice of Aragon, 1471–74; Pierre de Fobis (1506–1575) Table Clock c. 1530; Francisco de Goya y Lucientes The Forge c. 1815–20; Fifth Avenue Garden and façade with magnolias in bloom All images © Michael Bodycomb /The Frick Collection

in March 1913, meant that many objects from his collection, including Chinese porcelain, Limoges enamels, Renaissance bronzes and 18th-century French furniture, sculpture and porcelain were also purchased. These also included the Fragonard panels which were then built specifically into the Drawing Room. The Fragonard Room was fabricated in Paris by Auguste Decour at the height of the war and was finally installed at 1 East 70th Street in May 1916. In June 1915 Frick formalised his idea to leave the house and contents to the public ‘for the purpose of encouraging and developing the study of the ﬁne arts, and of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects’. Frick had four children with wife Adelaide and his surviving daughter, Helen, who never married, founded the Frick Art Reference Library in memory of her father in 1920 and remained its director until 1983, a year before her death at 96. His surviving son Childs’ children, grandchildren and great grandchildren served as presidents of the Collection and members of the Board of Trustees after the museum formally opened to the public in December 1935 (Frick died on 2nd December

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1919). The Trustees continued to grow and develop the collection after his death: Ingres’s Comtesse de’Haussonville was bought in 1927, Constable’s White Horse in 1943 and Memlings’ Portrait of a Man in 1968. Occasional pieces are still acquired: Clodion’s Dance of Time, Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock was bought in 2006 and the timepieces from the Winthrop Kellogg Edey’s collection in 1999. Today, the Frick Collection includes masterpieces of European painting (including Holbein, Titian, El Greco, Bellin, Constable, Ruisdael, Corot, Rembrandt, Vel zquez, Goya and Piero della Francesca), major works of sculpture (among them one of the finest groups of small bronzes in the world), superb 18th-century French furniture and porcelain, Old Master and 19thcentury works on paper, Limoges enamels and other amazing art works of remarkable quality. It is a joy to visit and should not be missed on any itinerary to New York. The Collection is open Tuesday - Saturday, 10 am - 6 pm; Sunday, 11 am - 5 pm. See www.frick.org for more information

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SCOTLAND

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SCOTLAND

Turning coal mines into a galaxy of art

Crawick Multiverse

A Scottish landscape has been transformed from abandoned coal mine to an amazing cosmic universe and astonishing artwork. Matilda Hickson finds out more about this astonishing ‘art-land’, Crawick Multiverse, in Dumfries & Galloway.

I Left, top: Crawick in 2011 before the landscaping began Left, middle: 2012 as work begins Left, bottom: Nearing completion, October 2014 (All images: © Steve Chettle ARTS UK) Right, top: Crawick Multiverse Supercluster & Galaxies Right, middle: Detail on top of the Andromeda Galaxy Mound Right, bottom: View from the top of Andromeda Galaxy Mound (All images: © Charles Jencks, Crawick Artland Trust)

n July 2015, an amazing art project opened in the Southern Uplands of Scotland. The Crawick Multiverse is a major land restoration and art project in Dumfries & Galloway, utilising landscape art to transform a former open cast coal mine into an outdoor space that can be enjoyed by future generations. Privately funded by the Duke of Buccleuch and designed by globally-renowned landscape artist Charles Jencks, Crawick Multiverse is a stunning representation of exciting discoveries and theories of the universe. The world-class landscape art design links the themes of space, astronomy and cosmology, creating a truly inspiring landmark. Dumfries and Galloway has always had much to offer those who appreciate a beautiful landscape. Nature lovers are attracted to its woodlands, wildlife, waterfalls and picturesque villages, while stargazers flock to the region where a lack of light pollution provides crystal clear, twinkling skies. Now this new attraction in the area captures the best of both worlds with a brilliant fusion of nature and cosmology. The Crawick Multiverse is a spectacular new art-land tucked in the rolling hills of Upper Nithsdale.

Hidden gem Passing through the quiet villages that surround the Crawick Multiverse there is not much to see from the road – but the keen-eyed will spot a monolithic boulder or two peeking over a hilltop. These stones provide the first clue as to what lies ahead - a vast, other-worldly landscape. The site spans 55 acres and is a visual delight, featuring meandering paths, towering grass mounds, a desert-scape, cliffs, glittering lagoons, a huge amphitheatre and much more. Particularly dominant are the estimated 2,000 boulders of all shapes and sizes found throughout the site which form circles, spirals and sentry-like

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rows of standing stones with a neolithic feel. And every one of these distinctive features links the themes of space, astronomy and cosmology. Each has its own special meaning, representing the sun, universes, galaxies, black holes, comets and more.

nature. His considerable portfolio also includes the construction of a Black Hole Landscape in Beijing Olympic Forest Park, DNA sculpture in Cambridge and a Time Garden in Milan.

First impressions The history of the site The site was originally home to a coal mine that was abandoned 30 years ago as production lessened. In fact, the legacy of the mining industry lies dotted along the landscape of the upper reaches of the River Nith in Southern Scotland. The owner of the land, The Duke of Buccleuch, recognised the importance of restoring the site and so just over a decade ago the idea of creating an art-land began to take shape, with architectural theorist, writer and landscape artist, Charles Jencks, invited to the site to assess its potential. Jencks is no stranger to creating major works of land art, including his own famous garden at Portrack, near Dumfries, which is the subject of one of his books, The Garden of Cosmic Speculation; and Northumberlandia (The Lady of the North) near Cramlington. His landscape work is inspired by prehistoric landforms as well as more recent themes known to underlie nature, such as strange attractors, genetic organisation and the fractal geometry of

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On visiting Crawick, initially Jencks admitted that he assessed the site and saw ‘dull ground, rocks… the end of nature’. However after closer study he no longer saw an industrial wasteland - but instead what he described as ‘the bones of a marvellous ecology’ with terrain that offered a wealth of possibilities. In the vast remnants of the former coal mine he saw a meadow, a desert, a gorge and a brook. The dropping of excess slag had even created a ridge that offered panoramic views of the beautiful surrounding valleys. Therefore, it soon became clear that there was potential not only to restore the site, but also to completely transform it. He found that the ecology of the site, and the materials found within it, inspired its design, which is based around space, astronomy and cosmology. The Duke invested £1 million in transforming the site which began in 2012 and took three years to complete. Tonnes of earth were moved, thousands of boulders were excavated and both played a major part in shaping Jencks’ cosmic landscape.

Above: North South view from the Amphitheatre Right: The Galaxy Mounds (Both images: © Charles Jencks, Crawick Artland Trust)

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The landforms and their meanings On arrival at the site, there is a choice of paths to explore its space-inspired features. A gentle walk (the low road) goes right into the heart of the site, while a steeper walk (the high road) goes up along a ridge walk to a North point that provides an incredible view, and lets one appreciate the magnificent scale of this work. If you start with the high road you’ll begin your journey on the Comet Walk which takes you along a ridge with scalloped edges of white-yellow sandstone emulating comets’ tails. At the top is the Belvedere – a northern lookout offering an incredible 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside, the nearby railroad viaduct and other distant landmarks. From this elevated vantage point your eyes are immediately drawn down onto a 400 metre path flanked with hundreds of boulders, running precisely from north to south. At one end of the path is the huge Sun Amphitheatre which faces due south and represents the iconic shapes and forms of a total eclipse - this one space alone can hold 5,000 people. At the other end of the north-south line lies the Omphalos – the centre, or naval, of the world – with an array of rocks signifying the centre of the Earth. Then there are the galaxy mounds – two towering, swirling grass hills that stand 20 metres tall and represent the spiral galaxies of Andromeda and the Milky Way. There is also the Supercluster – a mini-landscape of abstract triangles aiming south-west, creating beautiful shadow patterns, with paths or ‘rivers of gravity’ running between them. It signifies the supercluster of galaxies to which the Milky Way and Andromeda belong. And last, but by no means least, is the Multiverse landform representing the whole ensemble of universes, with hundreds of stones forming a corkscrew path and carved with lines representing the different types of universes and their varying fates. As creator Charles Jencks said: ‘This former open cast coal site, nestled in a bowl of large rolling hills, never did produce enough black gold to keep digging. But it did, accidentally, create the bones of a marvellous ecology. The landscape had to be healed, it had to welcome the nearby communities

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Video from website

of Sanquhar, Kelloholm and Kirkconnel, and help restore the locality both economically and ecologically – and so the Crawick Multiverse, a new version of an old scientiﬁc idea, was born. This work of land art, created primarily from earth and boulders on the site, celebrates the surrounding Scottish countryside and it landmarks, looking outwards and back in time.’ Whatever your passion, this unique outdoor space truly does offer something for everyone, and is not-to-be-missed on a visit to Scotland.

Above: The Multiverse and Galaxy Mounds Left: View to the Sun Amphitheatre (Both images: © Charles Jencks, Crawick Artland Trust)

Visitor Information Crawick Multiverse is situated just off the A76 (Dumfries to Kilmarnock road), 25 miles north of Dumfries and 15 miles from the M74 (Abington). Please note elements of the Crawick Multiverse present rough terrain and therefore all visitors are advised to come with suitable footwear.

Opening times: July & August 10 am to 6 pm; Rest of the year 10 am to 4 pm; Tickets

are available to purchase on site at Crawick. Dogs are allowed, however they should be kept under control at all times and any waste removed from the site or binned. No overnight camping, parking or BBQs are allowed. There is only pedestrian access beyond the car park unless through prior arrangement. www.crawickmultiverse.co.uk

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sponsored by

Art Roundup

ADVANCING WOMEN ARTISTS FOUNDATION

Discover Shakespeare’s London in his own words and papers The National Archives, London Showing until 29 May 2016 A new exhibition at the National Archives tells the story of Shakespeare’s life in London through the paper trail left behind. Discover the stories behind key moments in his life, from the birth of the Globe theatre in London to his last days in Stratford-upon-Avon 400 years ago. By me William Shakespeare offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to explore Shakespeare’s will, alongside other unique documents that witness his life. Through original research, scientific analysis and a new digital installation, the exhibition looks at why these documents were created and what they tell us about the world’s most famous playwright. Learn about Shakespeare’s life in London and the man behind the writing: royal servant, author, friend and father.

Image © The National Archives

Deposition of William Shakespeare in the case of Stephen Belott against Christopher Mountjoy, 1612

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Image © Fernell Franco Courtesy Fundación Fernell Franco Cali / Toluca Fine Art, Paris

Latest in art news and exhibitions

The Assumption of the Virgin, Francesco Botticini ,c.1475-6

Fernell Franco, Series Galladas, 1970. Gelatin silver print

Photographer’s work revealed Fondation Cartier, Paris Showing until 6 June 2016 The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain will present for the first time in Europe a comprehensive retrospective of the work of Fernell Franco, a major yet still under-recognized figure of Latin American photography. A photojournalist by profession, Fernell Franco developed a powerful personal body of work that addressed the precarious and conflicted nature of urban life in Cali, the city where he lived and worked for most of his career. The exhibition will bring together 140 photographs from 10 different series he produced between 1970 and 1996. It will also reveal the importance of Fernell Franco’s work within a broader cultural context, as part of the vibrant art scene that emerged in Cali at the beginning of the 1970s, marked by a spirit of collaboration amongst a diverse community of artists. Representative of the artists who emerged at this time, Oscar Muñoz has been commissioned by the Fondation Cartier to create a work specifically for the exhibition as a tribute to Fernell Franco and a remembrance of their fruitful artistic collaborations.

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Image © Andrew Wyeth

ART ROUNDUP sponsored by Andrew Wyeth, Lejanía, 1952

Rediscovering Delacroix National Gallery, London Showing until 22 May 2016

Museo Thysen-Bornemisza, Madrid Showing from: 1 March – 19 June 2016 The Thyssen Bornemisza Museum in collaboration with the Denver Art Museum is presenting the first retrospective in Europe on Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) and his son Jamie (born 1946), both leading representatives of 20th-century American Realism. More than 60 works loaned from public institutions and private collections, some never previously exhibited in public, will offer visitors a chance to become acquainted with the work of these two artists and to learn about their lives and creative abilities. Wyeth: Andrew and Jamie in the Studio will also reveal how in some cases the two artists’ work ran in parallel, was mutually complementary or even provoked challenges.

Image © Toyota Municipal Museum of Art

Revolutionary Le Brun has own show at last Metropolitan Museum, New York Showing until 15 May 2016

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Self Portrait, 1790

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Elisabeth Louise Vig e Le Brun (17551842) is one of the finest 18th-century French painters and among the most important of all women artists. An autodidact with exceptional skills as a portraitist, she achieved success in France and abroad during one of the most eventful, turbulent periods in European history. Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France is the first retrospective and only the second exhibition devoted to this artist in modern times. The 80 works on view will be paintings and a few pastels from European and American public and private collections.

Eugène Delacroix, Self Portrait, c.1837 Oil on canvas Image © RMN-Grand Palais (mus e du Louvre) / Jean-Gilles Berizzi

Wyeth’s American Realism to be found in Madrid

Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art, the first major presentation of Delacroix’s art in Britain for more than 50 years, surveys his dynamic career and then moves beyond it, to assess for the first time the influence he exerted for five decades following his death until the early years of the 20th century. Few artists have had the same impact and lasting influence as Eugène Delacroix. He was the most famous and controversial French painter of the first half of the 19th century and one of the first modern masters. Each new work he exhibited was scrutinised by enthralled contemporaries including Courbet, Chassériau and the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire. Following Delacroix’s death in 1863, generations of artists continually turned to him to find new directions for their art. Although idolised as a pioneer by artists such as Manet, Cézanne, Renoir, Van Gogh and Matisse – unlike theirs, his name is not a household one today. This exhibition gives visitors the opportunity to (re)discover this revolutionary artist. It includes over 60 works borrowed from 30 major public and private collections around the world, including the Mus e du Louvre, Mus e d’Orsay and the Petit Palais (Paris), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the National Gallery of Art (Washington), and the Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam).

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Left: Detail of Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) Self-Portrait, c.1627–35, Etching

Edgar Degas, In a Caf

Van Dyke portraits on display at Frick The Frick Collection, New York Showing from: 2 March - 5 June 2016

Photo: Marc Bolsius

Van Dyck: the Anatomy of Portraiture is the most comprehensive exhibition ever organized on Van Dyck’s activity and process as a portraitist and the first major exhibition on the artist to be held in the United States in over 20 years. Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) was one of the most celebrated and influential portraitists of all time, and enjoyed an international career that took him from his native Flanders to Italy, France, and, ultimately, the court of Charles I in London. Through approximately 100 works, the exhibition explores the astounding versatility and inventiveness of a portrait specialist, the stylistic development of a draftsman and painter and the efficiency and genius of an artist in action. The exhibition is organized by Stijn Alsteens, curator of Northern European drawings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Adam Eaker, Guest Curator at The Frick Collection. cott e ey, senior conservator, NelsonAtkins Museum of Art, presents the newly identiﬁed painting.

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New gallery opens as part of the Met The Met Breuer, New York Showing from: 18 March - 5 June 2016 Opening to the public on 18 March 2016, The Met Breuer will provide additional space for the public to explore the art of the 20th and 21st centuries through the global breadth and historical reach of the Met’s unparalleled collection. One of its first exhibitions will be Nasreen Mohamedi, a singular artist to emerge in post-Independence India. Mohamedi (1937–1990) created a body of work vital to the evolution of international modernism and abstraction and The Met Breuer exhibition marks the largest presentation of Mohamedi’s work to date and explores the conceptual complexity and visual subtlety that made her practice unique in its time. Mohamedi drew upon a range of inspirations in her work, from Paul Klee and Agnes Martin, to Mughal architecture and Indian classical music. She experimented with organic lines, delicate grids and hard-edged forms in her oeuvre, and this aesthetic informed and infused the photographs she took throughout her life. With more than 130 paintings, drawings, and photographs, the exhibition surveys the different stages of Mohamedi’s career and the development of her aesthetic approach, which made her one the most significant artists of her generation. Image © Collection of Gayatri and Priyam Jhaveri

Image © The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

ART ROUNDUP sponsored by

Nasreen Mohamedi, Untitled, 1969. Collage and watercolor on paper

New painting identified through Bosch study The worldwide study performed by the Bosch Research and Conservation Project (BRCP) has shown that The Temptation of St. Anthony from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, ought to be attributed to none other than Hieronymus Bosch himself. The painting was acquired early in the 1930s and held in storage for decades because it was classified as the work of a pupil or follower of Bosch. The new attribution is a significant addition to the small body of existent work produced by Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1450–1516). Heronimus Bosch. Visions of a Genius is on at the Het Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch, Holland until 8th May 2016.

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ART ROUNDUP sponsored by Image © The Riklis Collection of McCrory

French delights to be found at rosenfeld porcini rosenfeld porcini, London Showing until 2 April 2016

Image © Barcilon & rosenfeld porcini

rosenfeld porcini’s new exhibition presents French painter Emmanuel Barcilon’s exhibition On the Edge of Visibility. The kernel of Emmanuel Barcilon’s practice is concerned with an exploration of the possibilities of painting. Since his inaugural exhibition Penetrating Stillness, his approach has become far more singleminded. Previously the artist’s works could be divided into two distinct categories: the first being a continual exploration of painting, whilst the other was literally a visual diary recounting his concerns, obsessions and curiosity. Barcilon would integrate, partially buried within the layers of paint, drawings, photographs, text and graphic reproductions taken from a wide variety of sources. However, he has now eschewed this very autobiographical approach to concentrate on a spiritual investigation into colour, memory and the transformative effect of paint Barcilon has forged his own path, uninterested in any of the painterly fashions currently in vogue. Having begun to work as a painter in a moment, artistically speaking, when the contemporary art world was obsessed with minimalism and then above all ‘concept’, he has always stressed the need for the emotional impact of art. His sense of space and structure as well as his bravery with colour, gives the works their originality the paintings manage to be visually rich and spiritual at the same time.

Emmanuel Barcilon, Untitled

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Edwin Mieczkowski, Monobloc No. 1, 1966

Optical illusions come to Denmark for the first time in over 50 years Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Nr. Copenhagen Showing until 5 June 2016 With the first major presentation of Op Art and Kinetic Art in Scandinavia for more than 50 years, Louisiana opens the door to a visual experimental laboratory with the whole range of media and techniques in EYE ATTACK Op Art and Kinetic Art 19501970. Op Art is an abbreviation of Optical Art and describes works which use ingeniously crafted optical illusions and effects that go straight to the core of our visual sensory apparatus. The movement had its inception in the middle of the 1950s and its glory days in the 1960s, when it established itself internationally across political and cultural contexts. The artists were preoccupied with science, the psychology of perception and the new technology of the time – and turned their backs on old-fashioned storytelling and romantic sensitivity. A dynamic sensing of the world is also the essence in the so-called Kinetic Art, which broadly describes works of art with incorporated movement, whether literally or as an illusion. Optical and Kinetic Art developed hand in hand in an abstract, geometrical language of form, using new industrial materials and techniques, and share a strong interest for the anti-static and the direct sensory experience. While Kinetic and Optical Art originate from a particular time, the results are surprisingly timeless, and the movement has left striking marks in contemporary visual art and culture. The direct appeal to the senses is unabated – and is effective today in a mixture of instant fascination and nostalgia. With around 100 works and more than 40 artists, including Hungarian Victor Vasarely and English Bridget Riley in two of the main roles, the exhibition opens the door to a visual experimental laboratory with the whole range of media and techniques.

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Equisite Botticelli drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy on show

Image © Frobenius-Institute Frankfurt am Main

ART ROUNDUP sponsored by Three perched figures. Zimbabwe, Macheke, 8,0002,000 BCE. Watercolour by Leo Frobenius, 1929

The Courtauld Gallery, London Showing until 15 May 2016

Image © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett / Philipp Allard

Botticelli and Treasures from the Hamilton Collection features no less than 30 of Botticelli’s exquisite drawings for Dante’s Divine Comedy alongside a selection of outstanding Renaissance illuminated manuscripts. These works were all sensationally sold to Berlin in 1882 by the 12th Duke of Hamilton. Dated to around 1480-95 and drawn on vellum, Botticelli’s Dante drawings are very rarely exhibited. Therefore this is an exceptional opportunity to see a representative collection of the great Renaissance master’s interpretation of one of the canonical texts of world literature. Ten drawings are included from each of the three parts of the Divine Comedy, charting Dante’s imaginary journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. The drawings are accompanied by an extraordinary selection of illuminated manuscripts, many from the time of Botticelli. These include the monumental Hamilton Bible. One of the most important illuminated manuscripts in the world, this splendid princely volume is depicted in Raphael’s portrait of Pope Leo X (Florence, Uffizi Gallery) and has never returned to the United Kingdom since its sale in 1882.

Sandro Botticelli, Dante and Beatrice in the second planetary sphere of Paradise (Divine Comedy, Paradiso VI), c. 1481-1495, Pen and brown ink over metal pen on parchment 58

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Berlin show features German Ethnologist’s copies of art from Prehistoric times Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin Showing until 16 May 2016 Sixteen years ago, a collection of watercolour paintings were discovered in the attic of the Frobenius Institute. The Institute had been founded by German ethnologist Leo Frobenius (1873-1938) who had carried out expeditions to Africa in the 1920s and 30s and had recorded the rock art discovered there on his many German Inner Africa Research Expeditions. Now, as part of the Berliner Festspiele, an exhibition entitled Art of Prehistoric Times: Rock Paintings from the Frobenius Collection is showing 100 of the paintings. Frobenius and his team recorded the famous rock art of North Africa, inner Sahara and southern Africa which was all copied on site, often involving great hazards. Frobenius later also sent expeditions to European rock-art regions in Spain, France, northern Italy and Scandinavia, as well as to Indonesia and Australia. Until his death in 1938, he amassed a collection of almost 5,000 rock-art copies, but after he died and with the advent of photography which became the favoured way of recording scientifically, the works were banished to the attic. Before their banishment in the 1930s,

the copies toured almost all major European cities, as well as 32 American metropolises, being displayed as part of acclaimed exhibitions at Berlin’s Reichstag, Paris’ Trocadéro and New York’s Museum of Modern Art, among others. As early as 1937, Alfred Barr, the young founding director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), was convinced that ‘The art of the twentieth century has already come under the inﬂuence of the great traditions of prehistoric rock art’, consequently exhibiting the rock art alongside works by artists such as Klee, Miró, Arp and Masson. The exhibition at the Martin-GropiusBau highlights the interplay between art and scientific pictures in the 1920s and 1930s, showing how copies of rock images became art, and how art was simultaneously influenced by these copies. Europe’s surrealists certainly benefited greatly from interacting with prehistoric art, yet the works of Jackson Pollock also contain some allusions. This exhibition on ancient art as a subject of research and a vital source of inspiration for modernity discusses surprisingly relevant issues.

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THE VAST MAJORITY OF ARTWORKS IN FLORENCE BY WOMEN ARE LANGUISHING IN STORAGE. Dozens are waiting to be discovered Many are in need of restoration Hundreds are waiting for a space to call their own

Through its books, AWA aims to raise awareness about the contributions of women artists in Florence who have often been overlooked or are “invisible”. AWA’s publications focus on the Florentine art scene over the past five centuries, in an effort to make these pioneering artists more “visible”. Proceeds from all book sales are donated to AWA restoration projects. AWA’s publications are available on www.amazon.com and www.advancingwomenartists.org awa book ad v2.indd 72 057 AWA Ad .indd 72

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SICILY

Sicilian delights

The Greek Temples of Sicily

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Sicily is home to many stunning Greek temples, in fact there are more found there than anywhere else in the Mediterranean. With a new exhibition on Sicily starting soon at the British Museum, this is a good opportunity to revisit them with Heinrich Hall

Left: The temple of Hera at Agrigento in its beautiful setting (Image: © Heinrich Hall)

here are at least a thousand reasons to visit Sicily, the great island – indeed the largest in the Mediterranean – that forms the triangular football to the boot that is the Italian peninsula. They are all very good reasons, including amazing landscapes, a uniquely complex and delicious cuisine, a history that is diverse and multifaceted beyond belief, excellent wines, a vast array of archaeological sites, an even vaster one of historical towns and villages. But one key reason to visit the island is missing from the list above: Greek temples! Greek temples are one of the earliest welldefined expressions of what we now recognise as the Western tradition in architecture, and one of the most influential ones by a vast margin to this day. They go back to the 8th or 7th centuries BCE, and, as the name entails, they are indeed a key achievement of the Archaic Greeks. They originated in what is the south of modern Greece, namely the Peloponnese and Central Greece, where Greek temple architecture appears to have its main roots, probably derived from local wooden predecessors. The Greek mainland’s architectural style is the Doric one, considered to be the most austere and ‘male’ in character. The eastern Aegean and Asia Minor were famous for their own development, the more elegant and ‘female’ Ionic style, conceived about a century after the Doric one. Its most prominent examples at Samos, Ephesus and Didyma (much better preserved than the other two) are also marked by their vast monumental size. What’s so remarkable about the Greek temples of Sicily then? The short answer is simply that Sicily possessed a greater density of monumental temples than any other area of the Mediterranean, and now contains more well-preserved examples than anywhere

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else. Not only do they make for an unusually rich ensemble of particularly impressive ancient monuments, but moreover, each of them has its own distinctive character and peculiar features, its own history and its own specific setting within a town or landscape. The reason for Sicily’s wealth in such a specific type of monument lies in the early history of the island. In the 8th century BCE, Sicily became a target of the movement known as Greek colonisation, which affected much of the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Greek settlers, mostly from the city states of the Southern Greek mainland, set off to found a whole series of new cities on the island, including Syrakousai (modern Syracuse), Akragas (Agrigento), Messene (Messina) and Selinous (Selinunte). In fact, Sicily (and the south of the Italian mainland) received so many Greek colonies that the region was later called Megale Hellas or Magna Graecia (Great Greece). These settlers brought their Greek identity, lifestyle, culture and traditions with them, a package that also included their religion. The great temples of Sicily are the most striking expression of that package. First of all, they fulfilled the practical need of providing a place of worship or sanctuary with a house for the statue of the respective god or goddess. At the same time, the choice of an architectural type from the ‘motherland’, the Doric temple, served as a clear indication of the colonists’ background and cultural alignment. Soon, the size, format and individual characteristics also began to express the ‘new’ cities’ wealth, ambition and specific Sicilian identities.

Syracuse Syracuse (Syrakousai), founded by Corinthians in 733 BCE, was originally limited to the small island of Ortygia, which is still the heart of its Old Town

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and two major temples are found on the islet. The temple of Apollo is one of the oldest among the Greek temples of Sicily, built before 550 BCE. Although it is only partially preserved, its monumental character is still appreciable through the closely placed thick columns, as is its already very Sicilian plan, with an adyton, an inner holy-of-holies housing the statue of Apollo, at the back of the internal sanctuary. An inscription on the front steps names Kleomenes as its architect and Epikles as the creator of the columns – such a proud commemoration of the builders would have been unthinkable in mainland Greece at that time. For the modern visitor, the temple of Apollo at Syracuse is outshone by that of Athena, one of the most spectacular sights in Sicily. Erected by the local tyrant Gelon after a great victory over the Carthaginians in 480 BCE, this was another monumental Doric temple, built of local limestone (which would have been covered in fine stucco), with a superstructure of marble imported from the Cyclades, some 900 km (550 miles) away. What makes the temple of Athena unique, and not just among the temples of Sicily, is the fact that it still serves as a place of worship for its city after nearly 2,500 years. It was rededicated as a Christian

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church around 600 CE, later served as a mosque, and now is Syracuse’s Roman Catholic cathedral. Hidden behind an ornate baroque façade, the visitor finds what is essentially an Early Christian basilica built into and around the basic structure of a Late Archaic Doric temple.

Agrigento Agrigento (Akragas) was settled by people from nearby Gela and from faraway Rhodes around 582 BCE. The city flourished, especially in 6th and 5th centuries BCE, after which it frequently changed hands between Greeks and Carthaginians before eventually falling to Rome. During its heyday, Akragas appears to have spent a lot of resources on lavish architecture, a fact criticised by the 5th-century BCE philosopher Empedocles, who was himself a citizen there: ‘The Agrigentines live delicately as if tomorrow they would die, but they build their houses well as if they thought they would live for ever’. Indeed, Akragas is known to have had at least ten large temples. The most impressive of them today is the one traditionally called the Temple of Concordia, although its deity remains unknown. Dated to c.425 BCE, it is among the last of the Greek temples of Sicily to be completed. It counts as

Above: Interior and exterior of the Temple of Athena, Syracuse (Image: © Heinrich Hall) Right, top: Interior of the Greek temple at Segesta (Image: © Heinrich Hall) Right, middle: Temple of Concordia, Agrigento (Image: © Peter Sommer) Right, bottom: Remains of the Temple of Apollo at Syracuse (Image: Berthold Werner CC BY-SA 3.0)

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one of the three most completely preserved Greek temples across the ancient world (the others being the so-called Temple of Poseidon at Paestum near Naples and that of Hephaistos in Athens). The inner shrine, outer colonnades and pediments all survive in what is essentially their original state, showcasing the fine proportions of Classical architecture. Its good preservation is thanks to its early conversion into a Christian church. Also visible at Agrigento are substantial remains of three further large temples, including the structure known (probably falsely) as the Temple of Hera. The most noteworthy of them, however, must be the huge Temple of Olympian Zeus, of which only foundations and fallen masonry survive. Built by the local tyrant Theron (brother of the aforementioned Gelon) after the 480 victory, it was dedicated to the chief god. While modelled on the idea of the Doric temple, it was in fact a highly unusual structure for several reasons, including its huge dimensions (110 x 52 metres or 360 x 170 feet), its partially walled-off colonnade, and the use of massive block-built atlantids, relief figures of giants, to support the superstructure. Some scholars have interpreted the Temple of Olympian Zeus as a hybrid of a Greek Doric exterior and a more Carthaginian/Phoenician interior.

Selinunte Selinunte (Selinous) is located in the far west of Sicily. It was founded in 628/627 BCE by Sicilian Greeks from Gela, with some involvement from Megara near Athens. In many ways, it was an outpost among the Greek cities of Sicily, located close to the Phoenician/Carthaginian centres of power. This did certainly not stop its inhabitants from engaging in the construction of temples: we know of at least seven, several of them of massive dimensions. Four were located on the acropolis, the hilltop citadel of the city. One of them, Temple C, is still very impressive. We do not know what deity was worshipped at Temple C, of which one side is preserved. It dates to before 550 BCE. It shares some similarities with the slightly older temple of Apollo at Syracuse, such as the adyton at the Timeless Travels â&#x20AC;˘ Spring 2016

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...Sicily possessed a greater density of monumental temples than any other area of the Mediterranean, and now contains more well-preserved examples than anywhere else...

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western end of the sanctuary, housing a statue of its god or goddess. Nonetheless, its columns and overall proportions are more graceful. Especially impressive, however, are the grooves that allowed the huge bronze doors at its eastern end to open and close. It was approached via a monumental stairway of eight steps, the oldest we know in the Greek World. The museum at Palermo holds examples of its rich sculptural decoration. A second group of three huge temples stood just to the east of Selinunte, by its harbour. Two, G and F, lie in ruins, but the third, temple E stands proud, partially as the result of modern reconstructions. This was the temple of Hera, wife (and sister) of Zeus and goddess of matrimony. From the mid-5th century BCE, this temple incorporated a strong influence from the Greek motherland, where the style we now call ‘Classical’ was then in full swing, while also following Sicilian architectural traditions. Temple E is characterised by a harmony of proportion that is unusual among the great temples of Sicily. Its sculptural decoration, while modest in quantity, is among the finest achievements of Greek art in Sicily. Overall, it is strongly reminiscent of the very slightly older and far less well-preserved temple of Zeus in Olympia, a site that would have been familiar to many Sicilian Greeks, due to the athletic competitions held there every four years.

Segesta Segesta, inland from Sicily’s northwestern extremity,

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is in a way the odd one out among the cities mentioned here. It was not the product of Greek colonisation, but founded in the mists of time by Elymians, a local Sicilian tribe. Throughout its history, it chose a role between the Greek and Carthaginian spheres, adopting aspects of Greek culture, but not necessarily allying itself with its Greek neighbours. Segesta was in constant conflict with nearby Selinous. Nevertheless, late in the 5th century BCE, the Segestans engaged in the construction of a fine Doric temple on a hill outside their city, probably using expert builders from their rival and enemy Selinous. Perhaps due to the outbreak of war, it was never completed. Its remains look complete at first sight, with the exterior colonnades and pediments in place. On a closer look, one notes that the delicate column flutings and other sculptural details were not applied, and that the temple is lacking an interior sanctuary. So while there are many reasons to visit Sicily, which include its wonderful climate, food and wine, hopefully you will agree that its temples, full of ancient splendour and beauty, are definitely a priority.

You can explore these temples and much else in Sicily with Peter Sommer Travels, a UKbased tour operator specialising in expert-led archaeological and cultural tours in Sicily and on the Italian mainland and in Turkey, Greece and Croatia. www.petersommer.com

Previous pages: View of the Doric Temple at Segesta Above: Temple E at Selinunte (Both images: © Peter Sommer)

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EXHIBITION FOCUS

Sicily: culture and conquest British Museum, London Showing from: 21 April – 14 August 2016

Top: A tombstone in four languages, Marble, Palermo, Sicily, 1149 CE. Soprintendenza di Palermo (Image: © Regione Siciliana Sicily Palermo Bus) Middle: Marble statue of warrior, Akragas, Sicily, c.470 BCE. Museo Archeologico Regionale di Agrigento (Image: © Regione Siciliana) Bottom: A double page map of Sicily from Al-Idrisi’s Treatise, Unknown, c.1300–1500 CE (Image: © The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)

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n April of this year the British Museum will open the first exhibition in the UK to explore over 4,000 years of history on the island of Sicily. Sponsored by Julius Baer, Sicily: culture and conquest will provide new insight into the vibrant past of the Italian island familiar to so many visitors today. The exhibition will shed light on the remarkable artistic and architectural achievements of the island through objects in the British Museum’s own collection, alongside outstanding loans from Sicily and around the world, including many objects coming to the UK for the very first time. The exhibition will focus on two major eras: firstly, the arrival of the Greeks from the latter half of the 7th century BCE and their encounters with earlier settlers and with the Phoenicians, and secondly the extraordinary period of enlightenment under Norman rule, about 1100 – 1250 CE. The exhibition will explore how an astonishingly rich material culture flourished in both of these periods. Over 200 objects will be brought together to reveal the richness of the architectural, archaeological and artistic legacies of Sicily. When the Greeks made their first official colony at Naxos in around 735 BCE, they brought new ideas and forged cultural and trading links with the earlier indigenous settlers. Sicily’s undemocratically elected rulers, known as Tyrants, and civic governing bodies displayed their wealth and power through the building of temples, sometimes of colossal dimensions, competing against the largest temples in Greece and the ancient Greek world. A rare and spectacularly well-preserved, brightly painted terracotta altar, dating to about 500 BCE, is one of the highlights of the loans coming from Sicily. It shows a scene of an animal combat on the upper tier, while below stand three striking fertility goddesses. The British Museum is also fortunate to be receiving on loan a magnificent terracotta architectural sculpture of a Gorgon, the famous Greek monster, that was once perched on the highest point of a building at Gela in south-east Sicily. The exhibition will also feature objects from the Roman conquest and Norman times. Objects have been selected from different museums across the island and will be displayed alongside loans from Italy, the US and UK collections.

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ITALY

Desperately Seeking…

Overlooked Art by Women in Florence

Jane Fortune is on a mission to identify and bring out from the shadows the many women artists in Florence. Here are six works that are top of her list

lorence has been a powerhouse for women artists for centuries, but who were they and where can their art be found today? Some of the city’s most visited museum galleries exhibit works by women that are not noted in guidebooks, while other paintings, sculptures and drawings are housed in unexplored places unknown to tourists. Below, I have cited several venues and artists for those ‘desperately seeking’ overlooked art. From the San Marco Museum, which houses a work by the self-taught 16thcentury convent artist, Suor Plautilla Nelli, to larger-than-life sculptures on the Duomo’s façade by 19thcentury sculptress Amalia Duprè, this continuation reveals a part of Florence’s hidden cultural identity – women artists.

Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Duomo The iconic symbol of the city of Florence, the Duomo, is a true masterpiece, showcasing various centuries of creative genius. It towers over the entire city and its

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surrounding countryside, with the massive grandeur of its famous brick dome and its polychrome marble walls (Carrara white, Prato green and Maremma pinkish red – the colours of the Italian flag). Often overlooked are two monumental marble sculptures, found in the twin tabernacles outside the grand entrance of the Duomo’s main portal (Porta Maggiore), honouring the co-patron saints of Florence, Santa Reparata (left) and Florence’s first bishop, San enobius (on the right side) that were created by Amalia Duprè (1845–1928), an obvious source of inspiration for the sculptress’s grand-niece who would follow in her footsteps generations later. The cathedral was originally named after the third-century Palestinian virgin martyr, Santa Reparata. The Duomo (whose building began in 1296) was constructed over the remains of an ancient church dedicated to her, which stood there for over 900 years. The burial site was discovered in 1966 and Santa Reparata’s remains can be found in what is now the cathedral’s subterranean museum.

Amalia Duprè was born in Florence and trained by her very famous father, Neo-classic sculptor Giovanni Duprè (1817–1882), who enjoyed particular success among Russian nobility. She, unlike most women artists of her time, had access to nude models and met the eminent painters and sculptors of the day, who visited Giovanni’s studio. She also travelled with her father, gaining exposure to different artistic styles. Her marble San Zenobius (c. 1887) is based on a gesso model her father made before he died. She created Santa Reparata in 1877. Although well-known during her time, in today’s art history books, her father’s works overshadow her own. Some works attributed to him may, in fact, be hers, but further research is needed to confirm these possible attributions.

The Last Supper Museum of Andrea del Sarto, at the Convent of San Salvi San Salvi, originally a Vallombrosan abbey, is now a small museum of 16thcentury art. Its most celebrated work Timeless Travels • Spring 2016

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Above: Suor Plautilla Nelli’s Saint Dominic Receives the Rosary, San Salvi Right: Amalia Duprè’s Santa Reparata, The Duomo

is Andrea del Sarto’s fresco of the Last Supper, which is the most famous of the Last Suppers in Italy, after Leonardo da Vinci’s in Milan. A ten-minute taxi ride from the city centre, San Salvi also houses three paintings by the first known woman painter of Florence, nun-artist Suor Plautilla Nelli (1524–1588). One of those works has been newly attributed to her – a small, intense devotional panel recently brought out of storage after many centuries. It is Nelli’s lovely Pained Madonna (16th century), which depicts the Virgin Mary contemplating the holy chalice. Nelli experts believe this piece, so often passed by, to be a copy of Alessandro Allori’s Madonna, in his Lamentation of the Dead Christ, exhibited in the Uffizi. Nelli entered the convent at the age of 14 and studied and copied paintings of the masters, for she had access to the outside world until 1545, when, with the Council of Trent, all convents were closed, shutting her off from the outside world. Also note the inscription at the bottom of the frame, which translates as ‘not one of you thinks how much blood it costs’ a verse taken from Dante’s Divine Comedy

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unusual – a carved cherry stone pendant by 15th-century artist Properzia de’ Rossi. Properzia de’ Rossi (1490–1529), an Italian sculptor and miniaturist celebrated for her intricate carvings, was born in Bologna. She is the firstknown professional sculptress and one of four women artists featured in Vasari’s Lives of the Artists (1550). De Rossi’s cherry stone (1510–1530) is carved with more than one hundred miniature heads and set within a pendant surrounded by a laurel garland in gold enamel, diamonds, with a large pearl dangling from the pendant. It belonged to the collection of Grand Duke Francesco I de’ Medici. Properzia de’ Rossi lived a rather scandalous life as the mistress of a nobleman and was brought to civil and criminal court several times in Bologna, after being accused of disorderly conduct and for throwing paint in the face of a fellow painter. She died at the age of 39.

Casa Buonarroti gallery ceiling, second floor (Paradise XXIX, 91). When viewing Nelli works, notice her female figures’ cherry red lips! There are two other oil-on-panel lunettes by Nelli in this museum. As you walk through the front door, her Saint Dominic Receives the Rosary and Saint Catherine in Prayer (both restored by the Advancing Women Artists Foundation in 2009) hang on the left wall. There is a third lunette in this series, The ruciﬁ ion, in the Certosa di Galluzzo monastery, which hopefully, one day, will be united and displayed with the other two as they were originally.

Florence’s Silver Museum, Pitti Palace The Pitti Palace’s Silver Museum consists of twenty-five rooms. The rooms on the ground floor and mezzanine were originally the grand dukes’ summer

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apartments, and state rooms. In 1861, these sumptuous halls became the Silver Museum, where the Medici and Lorraine grand dukes’ lavish collection of objects in silver, ivory, amber, semi-precious hard stones and jewels are exhibited. The collection was started in the 15th century when Cosimo the Elder de’ Medici (1389–1464) ruled Florence. The jewellery collection is on the mezzanine level. Part of this magnificent assortment of precious jewels belonged to the last Medici heir, Anna Maria Luisa (1667–1743), who bequeathed the entire Medici art collection and the contents of each Medici villa to Florence, on the condition that nothing could be removed from the city. There are many beautiful pieces to behold in the jewellery collection, but one particular trinket should not be missed because it’s so

Michelangelo’s house (Casa Buonarroti) is a unique private museum in Florence. The building was owned by the renowned sculptor Michelangelo, but he never lived in it. Several of his relatives lived there until 1612, when it was converted into a museum by the master’s great nephew, poet, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger (1568–1646). The latter’s idea was to dedicate this magnificent building to his most illustrious ancestor and to display the Buonarroti family’s vast fine arts collection. It includes two of Michelangelo’s earliest sculptures, Madonna of the Steps and Battle of the Centaurs as well as his wooden model of the facade of the Church of San Lorenzo, which was never completed. The museum also hosts a great resource library, which contains the family’s archive and Michelangelo’s letters and drawings.

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Left: Suor Plautilla Nelli’s Painted Madonna, San Salvi Above, left: Properzia de’ Rossi’s Cherry Pit Pendant, Pitti Palace Above, right: Giovanna Garzoni’s Plate of Cherries, Pitti Palace

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Often missed, when visiting the Casa Buonarroti, is Artemisia Gentileschi’s Allegory of the Inclination, which depicts a nude women holding a compass. It is in one of 15 allegory panels, commemorating the life of Michelangelo, located on the second floor ceiling of the Galleria. Michelangelo the Younger commissioned her to paint it in 1615. In 1684, a descendent of Michelangelo had the figure’s lap covered with a painted drapery by Italian Baroque painter Volterrano (1611–1689), because he thought the nude figure too sensuous to view It is interesting to note that Michelangelo the Younger paid Artemisia three times more than any of the male painters who created the other allegories in this series. Allegory of the Inclination was the first work she completed in Florence and experts believe that the subject bears a resemblance to Artemisia, who was very pregnant when she painted it.

Pitti Palace Palatine Gallery, Sala Vetrine The Palatine Gallery, with its 28 rooms, is the main gallery of the Pitti Palace. It contains over 500 Renaissance paintings; 37 of these are by women of which 21 are by Giovanna Garzoni. All the Palatine paintings were once part of the collection of the Medici and their successors and the majority of works are currently

displayed as they were hung when the Medici dynasty lived there. The collection was opened to the public in the late 18th century. Famous miniaturist Giovanna Garzoni (1600–1670) was born in Ascoli Piceno. Little is known about her early artistic training, except that she originally produced religious, mythological and allegorical paintings. Later in her career, from 1640 onwards, she solely executed still-life works. Garzoni never married. She lived in Florence between 1646 and 1651 and was a favourite of the Medici court, under the patronage of Ferdinand II de’ Medici and his wife, Grand Duchess Vittoria della Rovere. Garzoni is perhaps best known for the 21 small still-lifes, which hang in the Palatine Gallery’s Sala Vetrine. Her works on parchment, in watercolours rather than oils, are exquisite and faithful reproductions of nature, often depicting flowers or fruits that overflow from ceramic bowls. She adds insects and animals in miniature detail, to intermingle beauty and scientific realism. Garzoni’s use of colours is dazzling and her eye for detail is exceptional. Also some miniature portraits of hers can be viewed in the Cassette delle Miniature (Room 24) in the Uffizi Gallery. Don’t miss seeing her glorious works!

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...a descendant of Michelangelo had the figure’s lap covered with a painted drapery by Italian Baroque painter Volterrano (1611–1689), because he thought the nude figure too sensuous to view! Another miniature on parchment in the Sala Vetrine by a woman who also enjoyed Medici patronage is Madonna with Child (1640), by Roman painter and engraver Maddalena Corvina (1607–1664).

Amalia Ciardi Duprè Museum, Museo CAD Though Florence is most often visited for its Renaissance art, it continues to be a thriving centre for woman artists who draw upon Tuscany’s wealth of traditions as their source of inspiration. One of the most dynamic art spaces opened in recent years is the Amalia Ciardi Duprè Museum (Museo CAD), located at number 54r on the appropriately named Via degli Artisti, as its neighbourhood was officially declared a Florentine artist district in 1874. Inaugurated in autumn 2015, this airy but comfortable exhibition space is also a cultural centre and working studio where the 82-year old Florentine artist

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Amalia Ciardi Duprè (b. 1934) continues training woman sculptors. Ciardi Duprè is best-known for her maternity-inspired sculptures recalling Tuscany’s Etruscan ancestry and her art that reflects social themes - especially those works denouncing prejudice, violence and social injustice. With a collection of nearly 500 of Ciardi Duprè’s most recent works, including miniature gesso models and bronze religious art, as well as paintings and preparatory sketches, the centre’s aim is to showcase her pieces on a rotation basis and provide a 360-degree view of the artist’s achievements. Ciardi Duprè is the great-great granddaughter of famed sculptor Giovanni Duprè and grand-niece to her namesake, artist Amalia Duprè, whose most celebrated sculptures are discussed above. Those intent on viewing Ciardi Duprè’s masterwork will enjoy a drive through the Tuscan countryside to Vincigliata’s

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Romanesque-Gothic Church of Santa Maria and Lorenzo. There, you’ll find her Poor Man’s Bible one of the largest terracotta reliefs in the world, which the artist created using 250 tons of clay. This multi-faceted sculpture occupies over four hundred square feet and represents scenes from the Old and New Testaments.

Left: Artemisia Gentileschi’s Allegory of the Inclination, Casa Buonarroti Left: Maddalena Corvina’s Madonna with Child, Pitti Palace Above, left: Venus of Castiglione Right, top: The Resurrection of Christ Right, middle: Demetra, Goddess of Nature

Experience the works of Florence’s most renowned women painters and sculptors and see the famed city from a whole different perspective. Art by Women in Florence: A Guide through Five Hundred Years, by Jane Fortune and Linda Falcone, is an essential pocket-guide that takes readers into meditative monasteries and through enchanting Medici villas, libraries and churches. Whether you’re a firsttime visitor or a veteran traveller, this guidebook provides a new outlook, spotlighting 80 works by 60 women artists. The first and only guide of its kind, it reveals a side of Florence that simply must not be missed! www.advancingwomenartists.org

Right, bottom: luﬂuns and Turan, the goddess of love and vitality (All images this page are at Museo CAD and photos by Martina Buzio)

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ENGLAND

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ENGLAND

Saving

King Alfred’s

Tower

This famous Wiltshire landmark has recently undergone extensive repairs. But no scaffolding was allowed!

K Left, clockwise: King Alfred’s Tower in the Spring with wild orchids (Image: © National Trust/Tam Holmes); Going over the edge no scaﬀolding allowed! (Image: © National Trust/ SWNS) The Temple of Apollo reﬂected in the lake in Stourhead gardens (Image: © National Trust Images/Clive Nichols) Repair work on the tower (Image: © National Trust/Neil Munns) Cleaning up King Alfred (Image: © National Trust/Neil Munns)

ing Alfred’s Tower is a 49 metre (160 ft) folly located about two miles from Stourhead’s Palladian house and famous 18th century landscape garden in Wiltshire, England. It was built on the site where it was believed King Alfred had rallied his troops before a battle against Danish invaders in 879 CE. The tower was designed by Henry Flitcroft in about 1772 for Henry Hoare II who laid out the landscape gardens at Stourhead and was designed to commemorate the accession of George III. From the top of the tower, visitors are rewarded with spectacular far reaching views over the three counties of Dorset, Wiltshire and Somerset. Alfred was the first West Saxon king to claim kingship over all Anglo-Saxons, and is only one of two kings to be given the epithet ‘the Great’. It is said that he had a reputation as a merciful man who made improvements to his legal and military systems and was concerned with the welfare of his subjects. The battle against the Danes for which he rallied his followers at Stourhead was an important one in which he managed a decisive victory, pushing the Danes back to East Anglia. The tower is a triangular shaped structure with three circular side towers, one of which is a stair turret which has 205 steps to the top, where there is a platform with a crenellated parapet. The staircase is illuminated by ten small openings which admit a little daylight. The centre of the tower is hollow and its total girth is c.51 metres (168 ft) which means that the tower’s circumference and height are nearly the same.

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Maintenance work was badly needed on the tower and the work was part of a project to repair the 14 buildings, features and structures around the grounds at Stourhead. Last year The National Trust was given £96,000 by Viridor Credits Environmental Company after they were shown the huge public support for the building on the Stourhead Facebook page. There had been other support locally, including a generous donation from the Mackintosh Foundation which was championed by local resident Sir Cameron Mackintosh. Work on the tower included replacing the roofs of two of the towers on the corners of the triangular section tower, as well as the walkway around the top of the tower which needed to be repaired. Some of the brickwork needed repointing and the statue of King Alfred above the doorway also had some minor repairs and conservation work. It has said that when originally built, the tower stood at the union of the boundaries of the counties of Somerset, Wiltshire, and Dorset, with one corner of the triangular base in each county. In more recent times the Dorset boundary was moved so that the tower now just straddles the WiltshireSomerset border. Work to the tower has now been completed and it will reopen on 5th March 2016. Kind Alfred’s Tower is part of the Stourhead Estate. Its gardens are open 9 am - 5 pm November - March and 9 am - 6 pm April - October. The House is open until 13 Nov and also 26 Nov – 21 Dec. See www.nationaltrust. org.uk/stourhead for more information.

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CANADA

Time Travelling in

Nova Scotia

Reliving Canada’s Colonial Past Garry Shaw discovers that the past is very much alive in this eastern Canadian province

he year is 1744, and I arrive at the gates of the fortified town of Louisbourg a little apprehensive – would the French sentry, dressed in his blue military uniform, and – a little more worryingly – holding a long rifle, let me, a Brit – the enemy – into the fortress I’d read that the garrison allowed local people in and out of the fort during daylight hours (with the gates sealed at night), but the guards were always on the lookout for British spies. Their test, so I’d read, was simple: if you spoke French, then you were ok. If not, then you were a spy and imprisoned. Luckily, the sentries were also known for taking bribes, but what if I met one of those pesky rule-abiding ones The walk to this point had been remarkably desolate. A simple path, with an expanse of grass to one side and the oceanfront on the other. In the distance, as I followed the path, keeping one eye on the approaching gateway and its potentially troublesome guard, the upper storeys of colonial houses – all grey rubble-stone and wood – peeked at me over the fort’s walls, revealing a taste of the hidden world beyond. Directly ahead stood the fort’s main entrance, the Dauphin Gate, surmounted and dominated by a coat of arms: a crown above three fleur-de-lis, arranged like two eyes and a mouth, an emotionless face, with the entire ensemble resting upon two startled

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In this land of heritage, traditions were not past, but still very much present. History was not something to just read about, but to be lived in the here and now stone fish. The sentry looked me up and down. My French was rusty, but a few hasty ‘saluts’ and a ‘ a va bien’ later, followed by a quick march past the guardrooms and their toilets (emptying directly into the ocean), and I was in. I had successfully left the 21st century and travelled back to the 18th. Time travel isn’t as hard as people say. Ok, so it wasn’t 1744, and I wasn’t anxious about my prospects of getting into the fort because I’d bought an admission ticket. Still, I was meant to think it was 1744 and so far Louisbourg was doing a great job. My sense of immersion in the past was startling, a feeling magnified by the lack of modern technology in view (cars are banned from coming near the site, for example, hence the long walk). As I’d quickly learned after my arrival in Nova Scotia, living history museums and accurately reconstructed historic sites are a sp cialit of this eastern Canadian province, and incredibly popular among both locals and tourists. As a fan of immersive historical experiences myself, I couldn’t help but dive into the area’s rich, varied, and often tragic colonial past (though admittedly, many of the people living in these past times probably didn’t find it that entertaining). And of the peninsula’s various immersive offerings, Louisbourg provided the pièce de r sistance. Leaving the Dauphin Gate behind, I could see that the town covered a wide area, stretching back from the oceanfront, with its wood-framed and rubble-stone buildings, each with their own land, separated and marked by wooden fences. Soldiers, with black tricorne-hats and stockings pulled high over their trousers, marched past me, carrying their rifles and chatting. Some were banging drums. Groups of women strolled along the streets too, wearing chequered aprons, loose dresses, white bonnets and neckerchiefs. Pigs, sheep and chickens, oinked, baaed and clucked away in their pens at one point, I watched a man herd a sounder of pigs along a street. As I explored my old/new environment, I passed the home of the town magistrate, named Joseph Lartigue it was now a boutique, selling replicas of 18th-century items. Next came a bakery, which had retained its original flooring and offered bread made to an authentic period recipe. Other

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buildings, spread out across the town, contained displays about the history of the site and the people who had lived there. Located in Cape Breton, an island immediately to the north of Nova Scotia, Louisbourg (named after King Louis XIV) was settled by the French in 1713, with construction on the fortified town starting in 1719, a process that took 25 years. It had been founded at a complex time in Canadian history, when Nova Scotia had been handed from the French to the British, but rather oddly without Cape Breton being included in the deal. Taking advantage of this curious omission, the new French settlers used Louisbourg as a base for cod fishing – the fish being dried and exported – and as a trade hub between the Old and New Worlds it quickly became New France’s main east coast trading centre. But in 1745, when war once again broke out between the French and British, Louisbourg became a target. Over the next 20 years, the town repeatedly changed hands between the two sides, until the British, deciding enough was enough, dismantled its fortified walls. In 1763, they abandoned Louisbourg completely, leaving it to fall into a pile of romantic ruins. Not that you’d notice today. The decision to reconstruct 25 of Louisbourg, including about 50 buildings at a cost of 25 million, was taken in 1961, with the idea of fixing the site as it appeared in 1744 – a Groundhog Year rather than a Groundhog Day. It became the largest reconstruction project in North America, and created work for local residents, left unemployed since the collapse of Cape Breton’s coal and steel mining industries. And this was not an attempt at ‘Disneyfying’ the past. Rather than splicing together the town’s most dramatic/dazzling architectural features, like Victor Frankenstein stitching together his monster, heritage experts extensively consulted both archaeological and historical records in order to faithfully recreate the town the only concessions made were for health and safety reasons, and to aid visitor movement (apparently, so I read, some of the closed buildings hide fire trucks and modern equipment). Interestingly, with Louisbourg only operational from 1719 to the 1760s, a period of roughly 40 years,

Previous pages: The tall ship Hector at Pictou (Image: © Garry Shaw) Right, top: Reconstructed Louisbourg (Image: © Garry Shaw) Right, middle: A demonstration of making lace at Louisbourg (Image © Canadian Tourism Commission) Right, bottom: Lunenburg County (Image © Canadian Tourism Commission)

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the replica town has now existed, locked in 1744, for 55 years, much longer than its original life as a functional space, the replica now has a longer active history than the original. Before leaving the 18th century, I decided to stop for a drink and a bite to eat, so I headed to the Grandchamp Tavern, an inn aimed at the ‘common’ people, both then and now. Sat at a long wooden table, enclosed by whitewashed walls and a wooden ceiling, my server handed me a spoon, which, given the lack of knives or forks at this time, I had to keep for each course, whether I was eating soup or chicken. I washed it all down with a beer, described only as ‘brown.’ While I failed to slurp my chicken from my spoon, two kids, sat at the table beside me, began to fidget excitedly. Listening in, they seemed to think that a public execution was about to be held, and rushed off, leaving their parents and meal behind. They returned a few minutes later, still giddy. Now, I’m not sure if Louisbourg does hold mock executions, but whatever the kids saw, it certainly made them happy. History had come alive (well, except for the person that had potentially been ‘executed’), and they’d experienced heritage in a way that they’d never forget. These are the memories that forge the historians of the future. They are why such living history experiences are so important, and why they are a clever use of the archaeological record.

The Acadians and the ‘Great Upheaval’ About a week before my visit to Louisbourg, one of my first stops in Nova Scotia had been Annapolis Royal. It was near there, in 1605, that French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded the first European settlement north of Florida (he also founded uebec City on 3rd July 1608 – there’s a reason he’s known as the ‘Father of New France’). He humbly called this settlement Port-Royal, and intended it to be a fur trading centre, but it only lasted from 1605 to 1613 (although it did rise from the dead, Lazarus like, in 1939, reconstructed from the original plans and populated by costumed interpreters interestingly, like Louisbourg, it’s another replica attraction that has far outlived the original’s lifespan). Subsequent French settlers built a new Port-Royal a short distance away on Timeless Travels Spring 2016

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Left, top: Lunenburg County (Image © Tourism Nova Scotia) Left, middle right: Adopt a lobster? Lobster Kettle Restaurant, Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island (Image © Canadian Tourism Commission) Left, bottom right: Mar II Tall Ship, with Halifax skyline (Image © Destination Halifax/J. Ingram) Left, bottom: This memorial church at Grand Pré is thought to stand close to the spot where the Church of Saint-Charles-desMines once stood (Image © Garry Shaw) Right: The Acadian cemetery at Major’s Point (Image © Garry Shaw)

the coastline, with many colonists moving there between 1636 and 1650. Over time, these colonists came to be known as Acadians, a distinct cultural group, who, along with the local First Nation communities, frequently found themselves caught up in the wars between the French and British for control of Nova Scotia. Indeed, following the imposition of British rule in 1713, the town would be renamed Annapolis Royal, and tensions between the British and Acadians would only increase. As I drove through the historic centre of Annapolis Royal along a tree-lined main road to Fort Anne, the area’s major attraction, I passed immaculate wooden houses, each well-maintained and individualised, some three storeys tall, with large grounds and perfect green lawns, surrounded by white picket fences. Antique cars whizzed by along the streets, disappearing into the distance, and I again felt that I’d fallen through time. Even when having breakfast in my hotel the next morning, I was surprised to see a town crier, dressed in full period uniform, walk through the door, to ‘hear ye, hear ye’ and tell everyone about the day’s upcoming events. Afterwards, he told me that he did a daily circuit of the local hotels, and proudly spoke about the authenticity of his clothing. Even outside the tourist attractions, I was living an immersive history experience. Perhaps it wasn’t me that had fallen through time, but Nova Scotia. Earlier that day, I’d stopped at Grand Pr National Historic Site, a UNESCO world heritage site since 2012, and in the early 1700s, home to Nova Scotia’s largest Acadian population. In contrast to other local historic sites, at Grand Pr , there had been only a small attempt at reconstructing the area’s lost built heritage: a memorial church, constructed in the 1920s, close to where the Acadian Church of Saint-Charles-des-Mines probably stood in the 1700s. Otherwise, the only building on site was the visitor centre, a large, red-painted building, housing a museum, shop and multimedia experience. One reason for the lack of reconstruction here is that the landscape itself is one of the attractions. From the 1680s, the Acadians had built a drainage network, dykes and wooden sluices (aboiteaux) across this territory to reclaim land from the volatile flood basin, changing the landscape and creating fertile

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farmland that is still maintained today. From the vantage point at View Park, visitors can stand and look out across this landscape, and imagine how life had once been there. And, because the farmland that the Acadians created is still maintained today, and their impact still visible, it is another form of living history. Another method of time travel. But Grand Pr also has a darker and more tragic side to its story. It is a location at the heart of the worst tragedy of Acadian history: the Great Upheaval. During the ongoing territorial war between the French and British, the Acadians had tried to remain neutral, though some had fought in anti-British militias. For this reason, and because they refused to pledge allegiance to the Crown, the British didn’t trust the Acadians. As a result, in 1755, when new hostilities broke out with the French, the British decided it would be best to remove these potential enemies from their territory. The Church of Saint-Charles-desMines at Grand Pr became the headquarters of British Colonel John Winslow, who summoned all the local men there to explain that they would be deported once the ships had come to remove them. By 1763, when the war eventually ended, some 10,000 Acadians had been deported from their homes to locations in France, Britain and the American colonies. Many died en route. Families were divided, never to meet again. The majority never returned home. The deportation left a brutal mark on Acadian culture, and would ultimately leave them a minority in Nova Scotia. In contrast to other locations I’d visited in the province, where reconstruction and performance were part of the historical experience, Grand

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Below: The countryside around Annapolis

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Pr was a quiet place of commemoration and reflection. The empty fields, where communities once lived, and the presence of the reconstructed church, a symbol of where the deportations began, said everything that needed to be said. Leaving Grand Pr and Annapolis Royal behind, I began my journey around Nova Scotia’s south coast, making a brief stop at the Acadian cemetery at Major’s Point along the way. Crossing a beach, populated by round polished pebbles, I entered a wooded area and then the cemetery itself, surrounded by a white picket fence. A simple chapel, built in the 19th century – a replica of the destroyed original – stood within, the words ‘Ave Maris Stella’ above the door. About 20 wooden crosses and one stone slab marked the burials, mostly the graves of early settlers, dating to the 18th century. In 1755, the family of Pierre ‘Piau’ Belliveau, along with 120 other Acadians, fled the deportations at Port-Royal to this area, settling in nearby Clare. Many died over the course of the winter, and probably ended up buried in this graveyard. In spring 1756, the survivors moved on to nearby New Brunswick, fearing capture if they remained (as an aside, if you visit New Brunswick today, don’t forget to visit Potato World, a museum dedicated to potatoes). Twelve years later, the deportations over, Acadians resettled in the area, rebuilding their lives. The cemetery came into use once again.

Pictou and the arrival of the Scots After Major’s Point, I took in the provincial capital of Halifax for a few days before following the curve of the coastline north towards Cape Breton. There I enjoyed my immersive experience at Louisbourg, and moved on to the small town of Pictou, where I stayed for the night. Strolling along the waterfront, admiring the picturesque scenery, I stopped for a drink at Carver’s Bar, and stared out across the road at the Northumberland Fisheries and Heritage Museum, where a sign urged me to ‘ADOPT A LOBSTER’ (it would apparently be set free once grown). Further along the road, at the Hector Heritage uay, the Hector, a large ship, painted blue and with three tall masts, was docked. Launched in the year 2000, this was a replica of the Dutch cargo vessel that brought nearly 200 Scottish settlers – each promised a better life and free farmland – to Nova Scotia in 1773, the peninsula’s first major influx of Scots since an abandoned attempt in 1622. After building a town and surviving their first harsh winter – a great achievement, seeing as their promised supplies failed to arrive – the settlers were followed by tens of thousands more Scots over the following decades, who found work in the lucrative lumber and ship building businesses. Scottish heritage now came to dominate the province, putting the ‘Scotia’ in Nova Scotia.

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Above, left: Alehouse sign in Halifax Above, middle: Soldier for a day at the Halifax citadel, Halifax National Historic centre Above, right: Alexander Keith’s Brewery, Halifax Overleaf: Soldiers at Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island (All images © Canadian Tourism Commission)

To learn more about the Scottish immigrants, on the way to Pictou, I’d stopped at the Highland Village Museum, another of the province’s living history experiences. Unlike Louisbourg, where time was frozen in 1744, at the Highland Village Museum, 11 houses had been erected, each representing a different phase of Gaelic life in Nova Scotia over the centuries. The first turned out to be a home in Scotland, with stone walls and a sod roof, where I was shown about life in the Old World, circa 1790. Inside, a costumed interpreter pointed to a large cupboard at one end, ‘It’s for the children to sleep inside, so the rain doesn’t leak on them’, she told me, after initially greeting me in Gaelic (not unexpected, even the street signs in this part of Cape Breton are written in Gaelic and English). ‘I can’t get used to sleeping in there myself. I normally sleep on the ﬂoor.’ From Scotland, via some highland cows, I next magically crossed the Atlantic and arrived in the New World. Wooden houses now replaced the old stone buildings, many having been moved to the museum from other locations and carefully restored, including a mid-19th century barn, a c. 1865 house, an 1874 church, and a single room school building from 1917, where another actor explained about education. There was also a replica general store, representing the 1920s, a carding mill, and an active blacksmith’s shop. It was a fun experience, and although some experts regard historical reconstructions as the braineating zombies of built heritage – and admittedly,

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long dead buildings do seem to have a habit of returning from the grave in Nova Scotia – witnessing how life evolved for these early Nova Scotian colonists certainly taught me a great deal about life in the old New World. As I sat at Carver’s Bar in Pictou, sipping on a beer from a tall glass and thinking about the awful voyage the Scottish settlers had endured (18 died during the 11 week crossing) and my experiences at the Highland Village Museum, there was the unexpected sound of bagpipes and drums. In the field behind the bar, a group of people had gathered, each dressed in full traditional Scottish dress and with tartans of different colours. It turned out that they were practising for the annual Hector Festival, when local people recreate the arrival of the first settlers, who marched from their ship onto the shore of the New World playing bagpipes. It was another jolt into the past. Another opportunity to time travel. Or was it Perhaps I’d been looking at it the wrong way the whole time. Instead of me travelling back in time, perhaps the people of Nova Scotia were summoning the past into the present, like a spirit at a s ance, the actors and reconstructed buildings the mediums. I finished my beer and listened to the sound of bagpipes, once the herald of a new beginning, now beginning again. In this land of heritage, traditions were not past, but still very much present. History was not something to just read about, but to be lived in the here and now.

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Getting there Flying Air Canada operates direct flights between London and Halifax and WestJet has a seasonal daily service from May to October non-stop from Glasgow. There are direct flights to Canada from New York (JFK & Newark), Boston and Philadelphia.

Visas Citizens of most EU countries, including the UK, do not require a visa to visit Canada; however, from 15th March 2016, they will require an eTA – an electronic Travel Authorization, which must be bought online before travelling. American citizens do not require a visa or an eTA to enter Canada.

Shopping

The Essentials Time difference: GMT - 4 Language: English and French are the official languages of Canada. Electrical current/ plugs: Plug sockets have either two flat pins or two flat pins with a round third pin. The current is 110V and 60 Hertz. Water: Tap water in Canada is safe to drink and bottled water is widely available. Politics: Canada is a parliamentary democracy with a prime minister as head of the federal government.

Religion: The vast majority of Canada’s population are Christian.

One of the best buys in Nova Scotia is wine. There are a number of vineyards on the peninsula, where you can go on tours and taste the local produce; the Jost Vineyard is particularly recommended. If you fancy something stronger, the Glenora Distillery produces single malt whisky and also offers tours, while for something sweeter, Nova Scotia’s maple products are also popular. For your one stop maple shop, Sugar Moon Farm – an award winning maple farm – sells everything maple-related, including an all day ‘maple brunch’. You can even learn about the craft of maple sugaring.

Getting around Buses connect Nova Scotia’s main towns and cities, but it is much easier to rent a car or take a tour (or perhaps even rent a bicycle). You can also reach Halifax by train from Montreal, with stops at Truro, Springhill and Amherst, though there is only one train per day in each direction.

Weather Temperatures across Nova Scotia can reach an average of around 23°C in summer, but drop to below freezing in winter; winters in Nova Scotia are, however, milder than in other parts of Canada. Rainfall occurs throughout the year, and there is often fog.

Money Currency: Canada’s currency is the Canadian Dollar, which is divided into 100 cents. Banknotes are issued in 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 denominations, Coins come in 1, 5, 10, 25 and 50 cents. Credit Cards are widely accepted across Canada. ATMs are available throughout Canada.

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Holidays (In 2016): January 1 (New Year’s Day), February 15 (Nova Scotia Heritage Day), March 25 (Good Friday), July 1 (Canada Day), September 5 (Labour Day), December 25 (Christmas Day).

Brief history of Nova Scotia Nova Scotia has been inhabited for 11,000 years, with the Mi’kmaq – a First Nations people – still living on the peninsula today. The first French settlers founded Port-Royal in 1605, establishing relations with the Mi’kmaq, and from this time, referred to the area as Acadia, with the French population known as Acadians. After several attempts to take Nova Scotia during the 17th century, the British were given the colony in 1713 under the Treaty of Utrecht; this treaty, however, did not include the island of Cape Breton, which remained in French hands. During this phase, Port-Royal was renamed Annapolis Royal and remained capital of the territory until 1749, when Halifax was founded. Although officially neutral, the majority of Acadians were expelled by the British from Nova Scotia between 1755 and 1763, during a time of increased hostilities between the French and British. This event is known as the Great Upheaval. Farmers from New England took their place, while Scottish settlers also arrived in great numbers from 1773. During the American Revolution, American privateers attacked Nova Scotia, leading the population to take the side of the British; indeed, many loyalists settled in Nova Scotia after the end of the American Revolution. In 1867, Nova Scotia joined the Canadian Confederation.

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Marlborough: Wine & Warriors Nicholas Fogg examines the history between the native population and early settlers in this wine growing region, which didn’t get off to a good start

arlborough today is New Zealand’s largest wine making region, with 65 vineyards covering over 23,000 hectares. A number of varieties of grape are grown, but the region is best known for its Sauvignon Blancs, which have achieved world-recognition for their quality. Amazingly, the march of the vines across the fertile plains and gently sloping hills of the region began as recently as the 1970s, but the first dawnings were a century before. In 1873, a British settler, David Herd planted Black Muscat grapevines on his Auntsfield estate at Fairhall. On his death in 1903, his son-in-law, Bill Paynter continued to tend the vines and squeeze the grapes and the rest, as they say, is history. But before Marlborough became a popular wine growing area, as is often the case, early relationships between the native population and white settlers in the Marlborough area did not get off to a good start. Captain Cook first visited the Marlborough Sound in 1770 – a century before

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Herd had begun his venture and returned again in 1774 and 1777. The M oris of the Ngati Toa tribe on the southern tip of the North Island were being forced off their lands by tribal warfare. In 1822, they crossed the Straits under the leadership of Te Rauparaha, their rangatira (tribal chief) and established themselves on the South Island. By the 1830s, they had established their authority over much of the north of the island.

Beginnings and deceit The first permanent onshore whaling station was established at Cloudy Bay by Captain John Guard in 1826. The whalers were encouraged to settle by Te Rauparaha. A lucrative trade was established, particularly in the muskets that the settlers were very happy to supply. In 1829 Colonel Edward Wakefield of the newly-formed New ealand Company arrived at Ship Cove to investigate the founding of a colony. It was to be ten years before his investigation took a practical turn. In 1839, a whaler called the Caroline under the command of

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Captain John Blenkinsopp visited Wairau and took on supplies. He got Te Rauparaha to sign what was supposedly a receipt for the sale and left hurriedly. Te Rauparaha showed the receipt to another trader who told him he had been defrauded. He had signed a bill of sale for the whole of the Wairau Plain. Blenkinsopp was later drowned at sea and his widow sold the bill to Colonel Wakefield. He used it to claim that the Company owned the lands under the lordship of Te Rauparaha. Surveyers were sent to assess the prospects for settlements on the Wairau Plain. On 16th October 1839, his brother, Col William Wakefield, a director of the New ealand Company, negotiated a land sale with Te Rauparaha for the area now known as Nelson and Golden Bay. New ealand became a British territory following the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, which Te Rauparaha signed, in the belief that it gave him title to the lands he had conquered. On 21st December 1840, the Reverend Samuel Ironside, a young missionary, and his wife, landed in Cloudy Bay from a ship called the Margaret.

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He established a first mission station at Ngakuta Bay and preached the Gospel amongst the native peoples with some success. On 5th August 1842 he opened his first permanent church. Later that year, he recorded ‘a most horrid tragedy’ in his diary. A ‘respectable’ British settler named Wynen was living with a M ori woman called Rangihaura. They had a son aged 18 months. While Mr Wynen was on a trip to the nearby town of Nelson, both were cruelly murdered. ‘Both their heads have been cut & mangled in an awful manner’, wrote Ironside. ‘The murderer is not yet discovered, though several of us have our suspicions. From all the circumstances, I should judge that some European has lusted after her and ﬁnding her unwilling to consent, had forced her, and found it necessary to murder her in order to cancel his crime.’ Many of the M ori had converted to Christianity. On New Year’s Eve 1942, Samuel Ironside conducted a Watch Night service. He considered that the addresses of the native preachers were very good ‘especially Parateue and Parameua’.

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On 7th January 1843, a ‘police magistrate’ called Nicholson arrived to investigate the murders. He arrested the man who Ironside regarded as the chief suspect, Richard Cook, who was remanded to stand trial in Wellington in April. Ironside was conscious of the shortcomings of many of his fellow countrymen and their potential influence to corrupt the native peoples. ‘The members generally are in good state as can be expected,’ he wrote, ‘considering the many temptations to which they are exposed through the inﬂuence of uropeans. ould that the majority of fellow countrymen would either get vital godliness before they come here, or else stay home,’ he lamented. On 13th March 1843 he wrote: ‘the people are by no means so much in earnest about salvation as they were two or three months back. The all absorbing subject of the colonisation of their country, and land settlement [and] various other harassing subjects connected with and growing out of colonisation, has a very unfavourable inﬂuence on their religion. If the coming of Europeans to New Zealand were attended with spiritual good to the natives I should rejoice, but as it is I cannot.’ On the 14th April, a religious meeting that

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Ironside was conducting was interrupted by a Captain Richards, who had arrived in a brig from Port Nicholson to collect the witnesses who would appear in the case of Regina v Cook. These included Ironside and a number of his native congregation. Before embarking next day, he heard a great commotion. The native people, who possessed no money, were bringing goods in kind in lieu of the church collection: no less than 243 bags of potatoes worth £2/17/0d and seven pigs. At the trial Cook was acquitted. Samuel Ironside felt that had the Prosecution been ‘more diligent’ in presenting its case, he would have been convicted. ‘Not that I want him executing,’ he added, ‘for I think that his life, rendered irksome would be a greater punishment to him than a public execution, besides giving him opportunity to repent.’

The Māoris show restraint

bove, left ori wh nau from Rotorua in the 1880s (Image: Josiah Martin Photothèque du Musée de l’Homme via French National Library)

On his return Ironside sensed that more trouble was in the air. ‘Land sold to the Europeans is the cause of the quarrel,’ he wrote. He was correct. On 22nd May 1843, Te Rauparaha and another Chief, his uncle, Te Rangihaeata, crossed the Straits from the North Island to attend a tribal gathering at

Above: Te Rauparaha 1840, inventor of the haka (Image: R Hall, Alexander Turnbull Library)

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Left: First map of New Zealand drawn by Captain James Cook Above, left: 1839 poster advertising emigration from Scotland to New Zealand. (Image: Collection of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, Scotland) Above, right: The Waitangi Sheet of the Treaty of Waitangi, signed between the British Crown and various ori chiefs in

Wairau. Although the New ealand Land Company was keen to get possession of these lands, ‘they are not disposed to part with it. They are heathens and violent ones too. I am afraid best there should be mischief done. If the surveyors at Wairau resist them in what they may do on their arrival there will be confusion.’ In fact, the chiefs behaved with great restraint. They told the survey parties they must stop their work. The land they were surveying was M ori property and the materials they had used to build their shelters were not theirs. They intended to assert the M ori right to the land by burning

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down the shelters. They would be careful to ensure that nothing belonging to the Pakeha (a M ori term for a white person) should be damaged. ‘How grievous’, wrote Ironside, ‘after twenty years of mission that these things should be!’ ‘Things look dark in this district’, he wrote on 16th June 1843. His ‘mission natives’ had gone to Wairau to join Te Rauparaha. They were intending to build a p (a fortified village) there. This placed him in a dilemma. ‘It will not do for me to live alone here & if I remove to Wairau, I am too far from the natives of the sound who are more numerous - or if I remove to the sound, I give up this people entirely - I am perplexed. Lord - undertake for me!’ The Victoria, a brig, had moored in the harbour. There were rumours that it had arrived to arrest the two chiefs. ‘Surely not’, wrote Ironside. ‘This will be the height of madness, but I cannot believe it. They will never suﬀer themselves to be made prisoners: besides until the ownership of Wairau is determined, such a step would be premature, to say the worst.’ There were indeed moves afoot to arrest the chiefs. The imperious local magistrate, Augustus Thompson, issued the warrant, charging the Chiefs

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Captain John Blenkinsop visited Wairau and took on supplies. He got Te Rauparaha to sign what was supposedly a receipt for the sale and left hurriedly. Te Rauparaha showed the receipt to another trader who told him he had been defrauded. He had signed a bill of sale for the whole of the Wairau Plain

Left: Phia beach, Auckland (Image: © Scott Venning, New Zealand Tourism) Right: The Rev. Samuel Ironside (Image: ref: PAColl-6075-10. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand)

with arson. Edward Wakefield organised a party to arrest them. It included Thompson and the editor of the Nelson Examiner, G.R. Richardson, who had inflamed matters with an article entitled Outrages by the ori at airoo. Twenty-four special constables were sworn in. The Government brig was commandeered. She anchored at the mouth of the river at Wairau on the morning of 17th June and the party embarked upstream aboard a barge and two whaling boats. The posse had swelled to about 60 men, who were issued with cutlasses, bayonets, pistols and muskets. Te Rauparaha’s p was on the far side of a stream. With him were 90 warriors and their women and children. He allowed Thompson and five other men to approach him, but ordered the rest of the British party to stay on their side of the stream. Thompson adopted an aggressive approach. He refused to shake hands with Te Rauparaha and announced that he was under arrest for burning down the shelters of the surveyors. Te Rauparaha pointed out that the huts had been made from rushes grown on his own land and so he had merely burnt his own property. Nevertheless, Thompson produced a pair of handcuffs and attempted to arrest him. Of course, the Chief declined to co-operate with this absurd attempt, so Thompson shouted orders to his men across the stream to fix bayonets and advance. As they began to cross, one of the party fired a shot. In the volleys that followed, Te Rangihaeata’s wife, Rongo, was killed. The Europeans retreated across the stream, scrambling up the hill under fire from the Ng ti Toa. Te Rangihaeata ordered his warriors to pursue them. Two were killed in the pursuit, but most of them made a terrified getaway. Seventeen of those who were presumably less fleet were captured by the M oris. They included Captain Edward Wakefield, G.R. Richardson and Augustus Thompson. Naturally incensed at the death of his wife, Te Rangihaeata took his revenge. The captives were massacred. ‘My worst fears are realised’, Ironside wrote in his diary two days later when he heard the news. Next day, with great courage, he gathered a ‘strong crew of white men’ to man a boat and voyaged to the scene of the massacre. They landed with

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great difficulty. There they found ‘the old chiefs Te Rauparaha & Te Rangihaeata and a tumultuous mob of their followers, wind and weather bound, exultant at their unexpected victory and yet alarmed at the consequences when the Government should hear.’ Ironside told them that he wanted to retrieve the corpses of the members of the posse and give them a decent burial. ‘What do you want to go for?’ they replied. ‘Better to leave them to the wild pigs, but you can go if you like.’ Next morning they found the bodies. Many of them had shot wounds. All of them had been ‘dreadfully tomahawked’ around their heads. Ironside’s party buried them and he read the burial service. Afterwards they discovered that the Ngati Toa, wary of retribution, had slipped quietly away. On his return to Nelson, the usually ebullient Ironside was quite naturally depressed about the situation. His native congregation had been reduced to a mere nine or ten worshippers. The remainder of his flock was at best theoretical. ‘If I go to the English whaling settlements the majority are away in the boats’, he wrote, ‘for whalers have no Sabbath, & the few who are left will not come to worship.’ ‘Oh for the direction and blessing of God! I never needed them more,’ he reflected. He may have felt his prayer had been answered when the newspaper arrived from Port Nicholson six days later. It revealed that the Magistrates wished ‘to leave the settlement of this unhappy aﬀair entirely

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to Government and they wish to assure the natives of their paciﬁc intentions.’ This news encouraged this doughty missionary to seek out his missing flock. He found them ‘in a very retired place where it would pu le the o cers of government to ﬁnd them’. They told him that they were waiting for some of their people from the Pelorus River & D’Urville Island to join them. Then they intended crossing the Straits and joining Te Rauparaha. ‘They are fully determined to defend their chief even to the death.’

Aftermath of the massacre Reverberations of the Wairau Affray were felt back in Britain, where the New ealand Company was almost ruined by the news. Land sales almost halted and it became obvious the company had been less than honest in its land purchasing policy. In the Nelson area, settlers became increasingly nervous. One group sent a deputation to the Governor complaining that those who had died had been discharging their ‘duty as magistrates and British subjects ... The persons by whom they were killed are murderers in the eyes of common sense and justice.’ Early in 1844, the newly-appointed Governor of New ealand, Robert Fitzroy (he of the shipping area), visited Nelson in a bid to quell the hostility. Against the hysteria being generated in certain sections of settler society, he acted with scrupulous fairness. He demanded the resignations of the magistrates who had authorised the posse and upbraided the New Zealand Gazette for its inflammatory journalism, warning that ‘not an

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acre, not an inch of land belonging to the natives shall be touched without their consent’. Fitzroy proceeded to conduct an enquiry into the incident, meeting with 500 M ori tribesmen. ‘ hen I first heard of the airau massacre, he told them ‘... I was e ceedingly angry ... y first thought was to revenge the deaths of my friends, and the other Pakeha who had been killed, and for that purpose to bring many ships of war ... with many soldiers; and had I done so, you would have been sacrificed and your past destroyed. But when I considered, I saw that the Pakeha had in the first instance been very much to blame; and I determined to come down and inquire into all the circumstances and see who was really in the wrong.’ Fitzroy invited Te Rangihaeata, Te Rauparaha and other M oris present to give their version of events, interrupting them to ask questions while making notes. When they had concluded, he gave his verdict. ‘In the first place, the white men were in the wrong. They had no right to survey the land ... they had no right to build the houses on the land. As they were, then, first in the wrong, I will not avenge their deaths.’ He also told the chiefs they had committed ‘a horrible crime, in murdering men who had surrendered themselves in reliance on your honour as chiefs. ‘White men never kill their prisoners.’ He urged European and M ori to live peaceably, with no more bloodshed. The settlers and the New ealand Company were incensed by Governor Fitzroy’s judgement, but it was a just one. It was also prudent. At that time the M oris outnumbered the settlers by a ratio of 900 to one. It would take weeks to summon

bove ori warrior (Image: © JamesHeremaia, New Zealand Tourism) Right: What remains of the Edwin Fox today (Image: Edwin Fox Ship and Visitors Centre) Overleaf: Marlborough Sounds (Image: © Rob Suisted, New Zealand Tourism)

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reinforcements and weeks more for them to arrive. Nevertheless the settlers began a campaign to have Fitzroy recalled. When Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary, reviewed the issues, he fully endorsed Fitzroy’s decision, declaring that the actions of the party led by Thompson and Wakefield had been ‘manifestly illegal, unjust and unwise’ and that their deaths had occurred as a ‘natural and immediate sequence’. Te Rauparaha has one lasting claim to fame. It was he who composed the famous haka or challenge which is chanted by the All Blacks before international Rugby matches. With the settlement of the Wairau Plain a port was needed to supply the region and to export its produce. The only practical option was to use the mouth of the Wairau river. Small ships would off-load their cargoes just inside the Wairau Bar to stores on the Boulder Bank. As the centre of colonisation shifted to Beavertown (the modern Blenheim), some miles inland, horse drawn whale boats were used to carry goods up the Opawa River. In 1855 a major earthquake lowered the level of the land by about three feet to make the entire Opawa river navigable to Blenheim. Within a short time fleets of small ships were plying the Opawa. In 1879 the port was moved to deeper water further downstream making it possible for steamer

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companies to begin operating. To avoid flooding, the warehouses were set on tall piles and except in high water, all goods had to be winched up. The greatest problem for the shipping companies, however, was not floods, but the shoals on the Wairau Bar. Numerous ships were stranded there on sand bars and several were wrecked completely. Eventually a pilot was employed to take soundings of the channels, guide ships across and in the case of a stranding, winch them off. After the First World War, the maritime trade of Port Blenheim went into a slow decline. By 1954 there was only one ship making the run between Wellington and Blenheim on a regular basis. The final blow to Port Blenheim came in 1965 with the opening of the Picton rail ferry service. In 1968, after 89 years of operation, the port closed. Today, a feature of the port of Picton is the square-rigger Edwin Fox, the ninth-oldest surviving ship in the world. She was built of teak in India in 1853. A year later she served as a troopship in the Crimean War. In 1858, the Government leased her again, this time to convey convicts to Australia. By 1873, she was owned by the Shaw, Savill and Albion Company and was taking emigrants to New Zealand. Around 1881 she was converted to carry refrigerated goods. Her masts were greatly reduced and huge boilers were installed on deck. In 1897 she was towed to Picton where she was used briefly as a freezer hulk and then to accommodate workers in the meat industry. In 1905 large holes were cut in her sides to allow her use as a coal hulk and everything of value was removed. In the late 1950s, her poop and her top gallant forecastle were removed. In 1965 she was bought by the Edwin Fox Restoration Society but a change in local government resulted in her being towed to Shakespeare Bay and left there for the next 20 years. Despite numerous attempts to have her taken to other parts of the world she was finally towed to Picton in 1981 to be restored. She remained floating beside the Society’s building until recently when a graving dock was completed. Her hull was still water-tight 147 years after she was built.

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...The greatest problem for the shipping companies, however, was not floods, but the shoals on the Wairau Bar. Numerous ships were stranded there on sand bars and several were wrecked completely...

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The origins of the Marlborough wine industry

he first vines had been planted on the South Island at Marlborough by David Herd in 1873, but in 1931 it was thought that Marlborough’s flirtation with vinicultrue appeared to be over as no more vines were being planted. However, in 1973 Frank Yukich, owner of the Montana estates on the North Island, the country’s largest wine producer, was desperate to expand production, but land prices were high in the areas with established vineyards. He gave the task of finding a suitable new terrain to the company’s viticulturist, Wayne Thomas, who, after months of research, produced a report citing Marlborough as the area with the best potential for wine production. An agent was employed to acquire land. The purpose for which they required it was kept a strict secret. Within 24 hours an estate of 1,173 hectares had been acquired, on which Yukich placed a 10 nonrefundable deposit. When he informed his board as to what he

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had done they were not happy with the prospect of planting a vineyard in Marlborough and turned the proposal down. Undaunted, he sought a second opinion from three world authorities. Their conclusion was not only that Marlborough had a suitable terroir, but that it was the best place for viniculture in the whole of New Zealand. The Board decided to buy and it turned out to be one of the best bargains in the history of wine-making. The purchase was hot news locally, but still noone had any indication of its purpose. Rumours circulated, but no-one seems to have thought that the land may have been bought to plant a vineyard. The purpose became clear when the first vine was planted at a ceremony on 11th August 1973. ‘Wines from here will become world famous’, Frank Yukich announced. Given that it was years since even a single glass of wine had been produced in the place, this sounded like hubris, but it was true. Despite huge initial difficulties, Marlborough wines have established themselves on the world market. The wine critic, George M. Taber, regards it as ‘the best

Below: Vineyards at Blenhiem, Marlborough (Image: © Mike Heydon, New Zealand Tourism) Right: A wine event (Image: © Scott Venning, New Zealand Tourism) Overleaf: Vines at Nelson ((Image: © Ian Taﬀord, ew Zealand Tourism)

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Marlborough may not be a first-choice destination for the temperance advocate, but there is certainly more to the place than quaffing the local tipple: green-lip mussels, for example place in the world to grow Sauvignon blanc grapes.’ Doyen of today’s Marlborough winemakers is probably Allan Scott. He was one of the first people to be employed by Montana at their new Marlborough vineyard, so his working career is as long as the history of Marlborough wines itself. In 1990, he set up his own vineyard, becoming the first of the many independent producers. It is truly a family business. Allan’s wife, Catherine, handles sales and administration. Son Josh is chief winemaker, while daughter Victoria deals with public relations and daughter Sara is chief viticulturalist. Allan Scott’s winemaking interests extend as far as Central Ottago: the world’s most southerly vineyards. There is no doubt that winemakers are a very special breed. The number of hazards they face would put off people of lesser mettle before they’d even begun. There are birds and insects seeking to devour the grapes, fungi trying to rot them, frosts trying to freeze them and heat waves trying to shrivel them. So not only do winemakers fight against the odds, they need special qualities to do so. ‘Eccentricity’ may be pushing things too far. Perhaps ‘individuality’ would be a more appropriate word. If so, one of the prime individuals must be Mike Just, proprietor of the Clayridge Vineyards. As a boy he had three ambitions: to acquire a suit of armour, to own a vineyard and to build a castle. The former was a worthy ambition for a man who claims to be a lineal descendent of Edward, the Black Prince – it has to be the case. He’s a dead ringer for the wonderful effigy on his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral. Mike achieved his first ambition by acquiring his knightly suit while learning his trade in the Rhineland. It was on his return from there with his wife, Paula, that he acquired his vineyard. They chose one of the highest sites in the district that was naturally arid, selecting hybrid vines that would establish a deep-rooting system. Mike Just was the first winemaker to do this. Others have followed him. And the castle? Well, it hasn’t exactly been built yet, but, knowing Mike Just, there’s no doubt that it will be. It’s only a matter of time before a Kiwi

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Neuschwanstein towers above the Wairau Valley. Marlborough may not be a first-choice destination for the temperance advocate, but there is certainly more to the place than quaffing the local tipple: green-lip mussels, for example. The mussel beds are situated in the exquisitelybeautiful Marlborough Sounds, a series of ancient sunken river valleys filled with the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Forested hills rise steeply from the sea around an intricate coastline of sheltered inlets and sandy bays. Unthinking and not all that witty people reckon that, as you fly into Wellington, the stewardess says, ‘We’re about to land in New Zealand. Please put your watches back 50 years.’ What finer recommendation could there be for this place of stunning, unspoilt scenery, old-world courtesies and a world-class viniculture?

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Getting there Flying The award-winning Air New Zealand (In 2014 it was named the world’s best airline) flies to 27 different international destinations, but all of them are on the Pacific Rim with the exception of Houston, Buenos Aires and London. They have a daily flight to Auckland from Heathrow via Los Angeles. Other airlines flying to New Zealand include Qantas, Emirates and Virgin.

Essentials Time difference: GMT + 13 Language: English is the dominant language and is spoken by over 96% of the population. The Māori language has official status. It is estimated that it is spoken by some 70,000 people out of a Māori population of 500,000.

Electrical current/ plugs: 220 AC volts. Plugs are rounded twopronged variety.

Religion: the picture is not

Visas Passport holders from a large number of countries that have Visa waiver agreements, including the UK, Australia, the USA and most EU states can enter New Zealand as a visitor for up to 6 months on arrival without a visa. Visitors must have an onward ticket.

Getting to Marlborough Once at Auckland, you can carry on your flight down to Marlborough in two hops: the first to Wellington: the second to Blenheim. Otherwise those wanting to view the stunning scenic beauties of the North Island can take the Overlander train to Wellington, or they can hire a vehicle and drive the length of the island – a distance of 460 miles. And once, in Wellington, the Interislander or Bluebridge ferries across the Cook Strait to Picton in Marlborough Province take three hours. The waters can cut up rough, but it’s worth it. The voyage has been described as one of the most beautiful ferry crossings in the world.

dissimilar to that in the UK. The mainstream Christian denominations are represented in similar proportions, although Anglicanism is strong in the Blenheim area in contrast to the south of the island, where the strength of Presbyterianism reflects the area’s Scottish heritage. When in Blenheim, visit the beautiful Catholic Church of St. Mary. It is built entirely of local woods and is the work of the noted Victorian architect, Thomas Turnbull.

Water: It is safe to drink the tap water but bottled water is available.

Money Currency: the currency is the New Zealand dollar, which is divided into 100 cents. ATMs are widely available at banks, along main shopping streets and in malls. International credit cards and ATM cards will work as long as they have a four-digit PIN encoded. Check with your bank before leaving home.

Holidays March 14 (Taranaki Anniversary), March 21 (Otago Anniversary), March 25 (Good Friday), March 28 (Easter Monday), March 29 (Southland Anniversary), April 25 (ANZAC Day), June 6 (Queen’s Birthday), September 26 (South Canterbury Anniversary), October 21 (Hawke’s Bay Anniversary) October 24 (Labour Day), October 31 (Marlborough Anniversary), November 11 (Canterbury Anniversary), November 28 (Westland Anniversary), November 28 (Chatham Islands Anniversary), December 25 (Christmas Day), December 26 (Boxing Day)

Politics: New Zealand is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. The Head of State is Queen Elizabeth II.

Weather As may be expected of a major wine-producing area, the Marlborough District generally has warm, dry summers and cool, frosty winters that curb malignant forces that would do severe damage to the viniculture.

Auckland

Nelson

NEW ZEALAND

Wellington Picton Blenheim Christchurch

Getting around The main centres in New Zealand are served by a network of reasonablypriced bus services. Rail services are more restricted. Blenheim, the chief town of Marlborough Province, is on the line between Picton and Christchurch. Blenheim airport has domestic flights to Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. For more information please visit www.newzealand.com/uk/

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Travelling by sea The days of leisurely travel by ship are gone, but it can still be done, but only just. You’ll have to go by cargo ship. See Sea Travel on www.seatravelltd.co.uk or mail@seatravelltd.co.uk. The voyage will take around 50 days from the UK, but you might prefer to sail from the USA or Australia.

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FACE TO FACE WITH

NEW ZEALAND Only populated about 1,000 years ago, New Zealand is one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most pristine destinations. The North Island offers a spectacular coastline with glorious beaches, rolling vineyards and olive groves, as well as the cosmopolitan cities of Auckland and Wellington. Meanwhile, with its glaciers and fiords, subtropical rainforests and towering mountains, the South Island showcases natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ultimate power.

coxandkings.co.uk/newzealand To speak to an expert or request a brochure, call 020 3813 5432 quoting TIMELESS

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DIG DIARY

Dig diary FIELD SCHOOL

AUSTRALIA Archaeological Field Methods Field School Dates: 19 September - 1 October 2016 Periods: N/A Organisation: Department of Archaeology, Flinders University  mick.morrison@flinders.edu.au  www.flinders.edu.au/ehl/archaeology/fieldwork/fieldschools/field-methods/field-methods_home.cfm

BELGIUM Protohistoric Olloy-sur-Viroin Dates: 2 - 28 July 2016 Period: Protohistoric Organisation: Les Forges St Roch and University  archeostage@skynet.be  www.archeostage.com

BULGARIA 'Fresco-Hunting' Photo Research Dates: May & June 2016 Periods: Medieval/ Late Medieval Organisation: Balkan Heritage Foundation, New Bulgarian University (Bulgaria); Conservation of Sculptures, Monuments and Objects (Canada)  bhfs.admissions@gmail.com  www.bhfieldschool.org/project/fresco-hunt

IRELAND Galway Archaeological Field School Dates: 23 May - 12 August 2016 Periods: Medieval, Post-Medieval Organisation: Galway Archaeological Field School  rsherlock@galwayarchaeologicalfieldschool.com  www.galwayarchaeologicalfieldschool.com

ITALY Pollena Trocchia, Roman Villa with Baths Dates: 6 June - 30 September 2016 Period: Roman Organisation: Apolline Project  info@apollineproject.org  www.apollineproject.org/dig The Field School in Archaeology and Bioarchaeology at Badia Pozzeveri Dates: 27 June - 23 July 2016 Periods: Medieval, Renaissance, Modern Organisation: The Ohio State University & The University of Pisa, Italy  drhubin@fieldschoolpozzeveri.org  www.paleopatologia.it/Badiapozzeveri/Fieldschool/ index.php

MONGOLIA Ecuador Field School Dates: 25 June - 7 August 2016 Period: Valdivia 3500 BCE Organisation: Florida Atlantic University Department of Anthropology, Comuna Salango & Salango Research Centre  vmartine@fau.edu  www.fau.edu/anthro/archfield.php

Central Mongolian Nomads Project Dates: 21 June - 7 July 2016 Periods: Multi-period Organisation: Centre for the Study of Eurasian Nomads & Mongolian University of Science & Technology  csen.field.programs@gmail.com  http://csen.org/Central%20Mongolian%20Nomads%20 Project/Central%20Mongol%20Nomads%20Index.html

GEORGIA

POLAND

Dmanisi Paleoanthropology Field School

Mortuary Archaeology Dates: 27 June - 20 July; 21 July - 31 August 2016 Periods: 8th - 12th century CE; Early Middle Ages Organisation: Slavia Foundation & First Piasts' Museum, Lednica  fieldwork@slavia.org  www.slavia.org/fieldschool.php?go=drawsko_eligibility

ECUADOR

Dates: 18 July - 13 August 2016 Period: Lower Palaeolithic Organisation: Dmanisi Field School Network, Georgian National Museum & University of Zurich  dmanisifieldschool@gmail.com  www.dmanisi.ge/page?id=19&lang=en

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DIG DIARY with

or those interested in volunteering on a dig or learning some new archaeological skills, the following might be of interest. Dates can vary, projects fill up very quickly, and some sites will only take students and not volunteers. Costs will be involved. But excavating is one of the best jobs in the world: where else can you be the first person to see or touch something that is thousands of years old? For more possibilities see the Past Horizons website.

EXCAVATION BULGARIA Excavation of Emporion Pistiros, Thrace Dates: July and August 2016 Periods: Late Classical, Hellenistic Organisation: Balkan Heritage Foundation (Bulgaria)  bhfs.admissions@gmail.com  www.bhfieldschool.org/project/PISexc

SURVEY/EXCAVATION PORTUGAL Proena-a-Nova International Archaeological Field Camp Dates: 25 July - 14 August 2016 Periods: Neolithic, Late Bronze Age, Early Iron Age Organisation: Municipality of Proena-a-Nova; Associao de Estudos do Alto Tejo  mail@archaeologicalfieldcamps-portugal.pt  www.archaeologicalfieldcamps-portugal.pt

GREECE Helike Project Dates: 4 July - 12 August 2016 Periods: Early Bronze Age - Byzantine Organisation: Helike Society & University of Patras  eliki@otenet.gr  www.helikeproject.gr

ITALY Vada Volaterrana. A harbour in the Mediterranean Sea Dates: 3 - 23 July 2016 Period: Roman (1st century BCE - 7th century CE) Organisation: University of Pisa  diggingvada@gmail.com  www.diggingvada.com

ITALY Gabii Project Dates: 19 June - 23 July 2016 Period: Roman Organisation: University of Michigan  gabiiproject@umich.edu  www.sites.lsa.umich.edu/gabiiproject/

CROATIA Excavation of Ancient Settlement of Siculi Dates: 18 September - 2 October 2016 Periods: Hellenistic and Roman Organisation: Museum of town of Kastela and Ventula Travel  bralic@ventula-travel.com  www.bhfieldschool.org/project/PISexc

ROMANIA Archaeology of the Dead - Medieval Funerary Excavation Lost Churches of Transylvania Dates: June & July 2016 Period: Medieval Organisation: Archaeo Tek (Canada) and Haaz Reszo Museum (Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania  archaeology@archaeotek.org  www.archaeotek-archaeology.org

UNITED KINGDOM Discovering Dorchester Dates: June, July & August Period: Roman Organisation: University of Oxford and Oxford Archaeology  edward.peveler@arch.ox.ac.uk  www.discoveringdorchester.blogspot.co.uk

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UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY GREECE Submerged Prehistoric Landscapes Dates: 22 - 26 August 2016 Period: Prehistoric Organisation: University of Geneva  gss@unige.ch  www.genevasummerschools.ch/courses/ courses-2016/submerged-prehistoric-landscapes

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP), St. Augustine, Florida Dates: 27 June - 22 July 2016 Periods: 18th century Organisation: LAMP  sturner@staugustinelighthouse.com  www.lampmaritime.org/LAMP/index.htm

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Adventures in

Archaeology

Past Horizons Archaeology News

Articles Projects Equipment www.pasthorizons.com

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Latest

archaeological

news

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Image: AA phots

ARCHAEOLOGICAL NEWS

Historic church discovered in Turkey’s Nevşehir ‘could change history of Orthodoxy’

Mammoth injuries indicate that humans occupied the Arctic earlier than first thought

Nevşehir Mayor Hasan Ünver said the frescos in the church showed the rise of Jesus the Christ into the sky and the killing of the bad souls. ‘We know that such frescos have so far never been seen in any other church,’ Ünver said, adding that preliminary studies show the church might date back to the 5th century CE. ‘This place is even bigger than the other historical churches in Cappadocia. It is reported that some of the frescos here are unique. There are exciting depictions like ﬁsh falling from the hand of esus hrist, him rising up into the sky, and the bad souls being killed. When the church is completely revealed, appadocia could become an even bigger pilgrimage centre of rthodo y,’ Ünver added.

New frescos have been unearthed in ev ehir

Yet another historical church has been unearthed in the Cappadocia region of Central Anatolia and experts are excited about its frescos, which depict scenes hitherto unseen. The church was uncovered by archeologists during excavation and cleaning work in an underground city discovered as part of the Nevşehir Castle Urban Transformation Project, implemented by the Nevşehir Municipality and Turkey’s Housing Development Administration (TOKI). The rock-carved underground church is located within a castle in the centre of Nevşehir that spreads over an area of 360,000 sq metres, within a thirddegree archaeological site that includes 11 neighbourhoods in the city centre.

Sergey Gorbunov excavating the mammoth carcass

The carcass of a frozen mammoth with signs of weapon-inflicted injuries suggests humans were present in the Eurasian Arctic ten millennia earlier than previously thought. These results, which provide perhaps the oldest known story of human survival in the Arctic region, date human presence there to roughly 45,000 years ago, instead of 35,000 years ago, as previously thought. Paleolithic records of humans in the Eurasian Arctic are scarce. In 2012, a team led by Alexei Tikhonov excavated a partial carcass of a male woolly mammoth from frozen sediments in a coastal bluff on the eastern shore of Yenisei Bay, in the central Siberian Arctic. Through radiocarbon dating of the animal’s tibia bone and surrounding materials, the researchers dated it to 45,000 years old. The mammoth’s bones exhibited a number of unusual injuries on the ribs, right tusk and mandible. The injuries, which included dents likely from sharp weapon tips, such as thrusting spears and damage to the tusk, were suggestive of human attempts to separate the outside of the tusk by chopping. These findings leave no doubt, say the study’s authors, that people were present in the central Siberian Arctic by about 45,000 years ago. Advancements in mammoth hunting probably allowed people to survive and spread widely across northernmost Arctic Siberia at this time, representing an important cultural shift – one that likely facilitated the arrival of humans in the area close to the Bering land bridge, providing them an opportunity to enter the New World before the Last Glacial Maximum. 104

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The orth Portico of nossos, rete

Roman fresco hidden beneath the streets of London uncovered

Knossos flourished again during the early Iron Age Recent fieldwork at the ancient city of Knossos on the Greek island of Crete finds that during the early Iron Age (1100 to 600 BCE), the city was rich in imports and was nearly three times larger than what was believed from earlier excavations. The discovery suggests that not only did this spectacular site in the Greek Bronze Age (between 3500 and 1100 BCE) recover from the collapse of the socio-political system around 1200 BCE, but also rapidly grew and thrived as a cosmopolitan hub of the Aegean and Mediterranean regions. Antonis Kotsonas, a University of Cincinnati assistant professor of classics, explains that Knossos, ‘renowned as a glorious site of the reek Bron e ge, the leader of rete and the seat of the palace of the mythical King Minos and the home of the enigmatic labyrinth, was the prosperous epicenter of Minoan culture.’ Scholars have studied the city’s Bronze Age remains for more than a century, but more recent research has focused on the urban development of the city after it entered the Iron Age – in the 11th century BCE. ‘No other site in the Aegean period has such a range of imports,’ Kotsonas says. The imports include bronze and other metals – jewellery and adornments, as well as pottery. He adds that the majority of the materials, recovered from tombs, provide a glimpse of the wealth in the community, because status symbols were buried with the dead during this period. The antiquities were collected from fields covering the remains of dwellings and cemeteries. ‘Distinguishing between domestic and burial contexts is essential for determining the size of the settlement and understanding the demographic, socio-political and economic development of the local community,’ explains Kotsonas. ‘ ven at this early stage in detailed analysis, it appears that this was a nucleated, rather densely occupied settlement e tending over the core of the nossos valley, from at least the east slopes of the acropolis hill on the west to the airatos iver, and from the Vlychia stream on the south until roughly midway between the Minoan palace and the Kephala hill.’ Timeless Travels • Spring 2016

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Below: MOLA archaeological conservator, uisa uarte, with one of 16 sections of a beautifully decorated collapsed Roman wall

An ornate fresco that once adorned the residence of a wealthy Roman citizen has been discovered by archaeologists in London at 21 Lime Street. Archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) uncovered the fresco six metres below street level, whilst undertaking fieldwork for a new office development. Dating to the late 1st century CE, and the first decades of London, it is one of the earliest surviving frescos from Roman Britain. Thanks to a huge Roman construction project, the fate of this rare wall painting was literally sealed in the ground. In 100 CE, construction of the 2nd Forum Basilica, the main civic centre for the city and the largest Roman building ever built north of the Alps, began. In advance of construction of the Forum the area was flattened. The painted wall was deliberately toppled and the Forum immediately built over it, incredibly preserving the fresco for nearly 2000 years. Discovered face down, the fresco was identified from the distinctive markings of the keyed daub onto which the plaster was attached. The fragile remains, surviving to a width of nearly 2.5 metres and a height of over 1.5 metres, were carefully removed from the site in 16 sections. Each section was supported, undercut and block lifted so that soil encased and protected the plaster. Back in the lab the conservators worked quickly to micro-excavate the soil whilst it was still damp, to expose the millimetre-thin painted surface beneath.

Image: © MOLA

Image: Bernard Gagnon (CC BY-SA 3.0)

ARCHAEOLOGICAL NEWS with

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Priceless artefacts found in Geneva lock up belong to disgraced art dealer

Authorities in Geneva recently discovered 45 crates of Roman and Etruscan antiquities which had been hidden by disgraced art dealer Robin Symes before he was sent to prison in 2005. Thought to have been hidden for 15 years, the treasures include two life-size Etruscan sarcophaguses, one depicting an elderly man and the other a young woman, both reclining on their sides. They are among the very few examples of their kind and date from the 2nd century BCE. There are also fragments of fresco from Pompeii as well as terracotta pots, decorated vases, busts and bas-reliefs. Many of the items are believed to have been looted from archaeological sites by tomb raiders. The crates were discovered by a specialist unit of Italy’s Carabinieri police that deals with art crime, with the collaboration of the Swiss authorities. The objects were ‘exceptional pieces (which were taken from) clandestine excavations,’ prosecutors in Geneva said in a statement. They are believed to have been looted from tombs in what remains of the ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinia, in the hills north of Rome. The antiquities have now been returned to Rome. The investigation dates back to March 2014, when the Italians first began to suspect that looted antiquities might be kept in storage in Geneva. Symes was described by Swiss authorities as ‘a former high-proﬁle British art dealer whose name has been linked in the past to the trading of looted antiquities throughout the world.’ He had concealed the treasures during a court case in 2005 with his dead partner’s family, who were making a claim on his business. He lost the bitter legal fight and was jailed for two years for lying under oath.

emale reclining ﬁgure sarcophagus

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Archaeologists have speculated that the skeletons belonged to gladiators, although they could also have been soldiers or criminals

Image: YAT

ARCHAEOLOGICAL NEWS

Tracing the origins of Roman-age decapitated bodies found in York New technology is helping piece together the story of York’s Roman ‘gladiators’. Cutting edge genome technology, hailed as being the next step on from DNA analysis, has cast more light on a mystery that has perplexed archaeologists for more than a decade. The origins of a set of Roman-age decapitated bodies, found by York Archaeological Trust at Driffield Terrace in the city, have been explored, revealing a Middle Eastern body alongside native Europeans. Archaeologists have speculated that the skeletons belonged to gladiators, although they could also have been soldiers or criminals. Several suffered perimortem decapitation and were all of a similar age – under 45 years old. Their skulls were buried with the body, although not positioned consistently – some were on the chest, some within the legs, and others at the feet. Although examining the skeletons revealed much about the life they lived – including childhood deprivation and injuries consistent with battle trauma – it was not until pioneering genomic analysis by a team from Trinity College Dublin, that archaeologists could start to piece together the origins of the men. Dr Gundula Muldner of the University of Reading, Dr Janet Montgomery of the University of Durham and Malin Holst and Anwen Caffel of York Osteoarchaeology selected seven skeletons for whole genome analyses. Most of those sampled had genomes similar to an earlier Iron Age woman from Melton, East Yorkshire. The poor childhood health of these men suggests that they were locals who endured childhood stress, but their robust skeletons and healed trauma suggest that they were used to wielding weapons. The nearest modern descendants of the Roman British men sampled live not in Yorkshire, but in Wales. One decapitated skeleton is thought to have come from the Middle East (Palestine) before he died in York. Timeless Travels • Spring 2016

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ARCHAEOLOGICAL NEWS with

Blombos ave, outh frica

Remains of the boat at Abusir

Boat discovered at Abusir from pyramid age The Czech Institute of Egyptology in Prague has recently made an unexpected discovery at Abusir South that highlights the importance of this cemetery of the Old Kingdom officials. The excavations revealed an 18 metre long wooden boat lying on tafla during the 2015 excavations. The boat’s orientation, length and the pottery collected from its interior, make a clear connection between a nearby mastaba and the vessel, both dating to c.2550 BCE. While extremely fragile, the rough 4,500 year-old planks will shed new light on ship building in ancient Egypt. The wooden planks were joined by wooden pegs that are still visible in their original position and the desert sand has preserved the plant fibre battens which covered the planking seams. Some of the ropes that bound the boat together are also still in their original position with all their details intact, which is a unique discovery in the study of ancient Egyptian boats. Image: J.-D. Vigne, CNRS/MNHN

Image: University of Bergen

Since its discovery in the early 1990s, Blombos Cave, about 300 kilometres east of Cape Town, South Africa, has yielded important new information on the behavioural evolution of the human species. Blombos contains Middle Stone Age deposits currently dated at between 100,000 and 70,000 years, and a Later Stone Age sequence dated at between 2,000 and 300 years. The researchers have now been looking closer at technology used by different groups in this and other regions in South Africa, such as spear points made of stone, as well as decorated ostrich eggshells, to determine whether there was an overlap and contact across groups of Middle Stone Age humans. The pattern we are seeing is that when demographics change, people interact more. or e ample, we have found similar patterns engraved on ostrich eggshells in diﬀerent sites. This shows that people were probably sharing symbolic material culture, at certain times but not at others.’ says Dr Karen van Niekerk.

Image: Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities

Humans evolved by sharing technology and culture

Cats domesticated in China earlier than 3000 BCE Were domestic cats brought to China over 5,000 years ago, or were small cats domesticated in China at that time? There was no way of deciding between these two hypotheses until a research team succeeded in determining the species corresponding to cat remains found in agricultural settlements in China, dating from around 3,500 BCE. All the bones belong to the leopard cat, a distant relation of the western wildcat, from which all modern domestic Timeless Travels • Spring 2016

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cats are descended. The scientists have thus provided evidence that cats began to be domesticated in China earlier than 3,000 BCE. This scenario is comparable to that which took place in the Near East and Egypt, where a relationship between humans and cats developed following the birth of agriculture. Left: Using rice grains to measure the cranial capacity of the skull of a Neolithic cat from u huangguoliang haan i, , - , B . 107

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ARCHAEOLOGICAL NEWS Skeletons in a mass plague grave from in artigues, rance

Oldest Christian monastery in Iraq now a field of rubble

Black Death bacterium strain remained in Europe for over four hundred years An international team of researchers has uncovered new information about the Black Death in Europe and its descendants, suggesting it persisted on the continent over four centuries, reemerging to kill hundreds of thousands in Europe in separate, devastating waves. The findings address the long standing debate among scientists about whether or not the bacterium Yersinia pestis – responsible for the Black Death - remained within Europe for hundreds of years and was the principal cause of some of the worst re-emergences and subsequent plague epidemics in human history. Until now, some researchers believed repeated outbreaks were the result of the bacterium being re-introduced through major trade with China, a widely-known reservoir of the plague. Instead, it turns out the plague may never have left. Geneticist Hendrik Poinar, director of McMaster University’s Ancient DNA Centre and a principal investigator at the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, collaborated with a number of different universities to map the complete genomes of Y.pestis which was harvested from five adult male victims of the 1722 Plague of Provence. To do so, they analysed the dental pulp taken from the five bodies, originally buried in Marseilles, France. Researchers were able to extract, purify and enrich specifically for the pathogen’s DNA, and then compare the samples with over 150 plague genomes representing a world wide distribution as well as from other points in time, both modern and ancient. They determined the Marseilles strain is a direct descendant of the Black Death that devastated Europe nearly 400 years earlier and not a divergent strain that came, like the previous pandemic strains Justinian and Black Death, from separate emergences originating in Asia. 108

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Image: Public domain

The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble by jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Saint Elijah’s Monastery stood as a place of worship for 1,400 years, including most recently for US troops. In earlier millennia, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches, prayed in the chapel, worshipped at the altar. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christ’s name, were carved near the entrance. Built in 590 CE, tragedy struck at St. Elijah’s in 1743, when as many as 150 monks who refused to convert to Islam were massacred by a Persian general. In 2003 St. Elijah’s shuddered again - this time a wall was smashed by a tank turret blown off in battle and Iraqi troops moved in, dumping garbage in the cistern. Recent satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe tasked a high resolution camera to grab photos of the site and then compare them with earlier images of the same spot. Before it was razed, a partially restored, 27,000-square-foot stone and mortar building stood fortress-like on a hill above Mosul. Although the roof was largely missing, it had 26 distinctive rooms including a sanctuary and chapel. Later photos show ‘that the stone walls have been literally pulverized,’ said imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, who pinpointed the destruction between August and September 2014. ‘Bulldo ers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly e plosives turned those stone walls into this field of gray-white dust. They destroyed it completely,’ he said from his Colorado offices.

aint lijah s onastery, osul, Iraq - the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq

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EXHIBITION FOCUS

Death on the Nile: Uncovering the afterlife of ancient Egypt The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Showing until: 22 May 2016

Top down: All images © The Fitzwilliam Museum 1. Face from a co n, with eyes and eyebrows inlaid, gilded; ood gilded , B , th ynasty , New Kingdom . ooden model of a brewing and baking workshop. Find spot: Tomb of hety, Beni asan, tomb . Painted wood, plaster and linen. c. B th ynasty Middle Kingdom . edjat ye; ewellery mulet . o n of a priest at arnak, akhtefmut. Find spot: amesseum, Thebes, gypt. B , nd ynasty , Third Intermediate Period Timeless Travels • Spring 2016

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he Fitzwilliam Museum is marking its bicentenary anniversary celebrations with an exhibition on its remarkable collection of Egyptian coffins. Going beyond the images of mummies, animal-headed gods, pharaohs and mystery often associated with ancient Egypt, Death on the Nile will explore the beliefs and working practices behind these objects and reveal fascinating new information on how they were made. Golden yellow, and covered from head to toe in bright hieroglyphs and pictures in reds, greens and blues, the set of coffins belonging to a man named Nespawershefyt (also known as Nes-Amun) was one of the very first gifts to the Fitzwilliam collection, given by two members of the University of Cambridge in 1822, just a few years after the Museum was founded in 1816. The following year Giovanni Belzoni presented the University with the seven-ton granite sarcophagus lid of Ramesses III which he had retrieved from the Valley of the Kings. These and other gifts, as well as material from excavations, for which the Museum was a sponsor, created the remarkable collection of Egyptian coffins at the Fitzwilliam today. Through scientific analysis, the woods and the pigments and varnishes used by the craftsmen to make the decoration on the coffins have been identified. Evidence of working practices, from the variety of tool marks found on the wood to the drawing and painting techniques used to make the images, have been revealed through close study and a range of imaging techniques. All this information helps bring us closer to the people who made the coffins as do the very human touches and stumbles – secret repairs hidden underneath a perfect finish, mistakes in drawings that had to be changed in the final painting and even the odd practice doodle on the underside of a coffin box. A series of reconstructions show how some of the coffins were made and, in a live conservation area, visitors are able to examine in more detail the scientific techniques and the materials and construction methods uncovered during the project. Helen Strudwick, Egyptologist and exhibition co-curator said: ‘This is a chance for us to encourage visitors to look more closely at these e traordinary objects. co n artisan in ancient Egypt had to deal creatively with many practical problems and sometimes restrictions on materials available because of the economic or political climate. The co ns show the skill and care with which the Egyptians prepared for the afterlife.’ 109

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ANCIENT TRAVELLER

The Last Word:

Freya Stark Freya Stark loved to travel and spent over 70 years exploring the Middle East. She published two dozen books about her adventures and was often arrested along the way, but frequently charmed her way out of trouble. Freya is on her way to Pusht-i-Kuh, Iran and has been joined by a lieutenant and two policemen to escort her into the town.

Excerpt from The Valleys of the Assassins and Other Persian Travels (1934) with kind permission of John R. Murray Above: Portrait of a young Freya Stark

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The lieutenant collapsed beside one of them [a tree], while I with my party settle down for lunch beside another; and while the chicken was caught and massacred in the name of Allah, two cheerful little orphan girls, dressed with all fineries of beads and bangles, came to chat and experiment, in momentary awe, with the zip fastener of my travelling dress. They had been adopted by the woman of the tent: she looked at them smilingly, as if they were her own - but sadly too, for it was a very poor family, and the brother had just gone off as a soldier the day before; we had met him on the track with the rifleman of Saidmarreh. I distributed safety-pins, for their gowns had no fastening at the neck, and this gift in itself would have been considered as an ample equivalent for our luncheon. Before leaving I crossed to the lieutenant’s tent, and found him so ill that I suggested riding on to send a doctor...but he refused...and only consented to change mounts so as to recline on the pack saddle and baggage, while I took his horse and set out as the leader of the expedition, feeling sorry for my captor, but rather amused at riding thus into the enemy’s stronghold. We looked down on all this [the town of Pushti-Kuh] suddenly from a little neck on the edge of the plain, where the policemen and I waited for our demoralised lieutenant, guessing that he would not like his captive to ride into the town ahead of him. When he came, we all descended slowly down a stony path. Signs of civilization, in the pleasant form of donkeys laden with water-melons, met us on the way. We skirted the main boulevard, until we saw, through a green of poplar leaves, the lightblue uniform of a police sentry at the gate of the

fort. More police gathered in a small knot. A trim little man in khaki, with blue aiguillettes, walked up. everyone saluted. He went to the lieutenant, faint surprise visible at the unexpected sight of him on a pack animal: a few words were exchanged: then he came up to me, greeted me very courteously, and remarked that the Governor was expecting to see me. Nothing, said I, could be more agreeable than to call on the Governor. I had come all this way to do so. But I must wash first. The commandant of Police, or Ajuzan as they called him, giving a cursory look to my appearance, evidently saw that I was right. He agreed without more ado, and took me through a doorway in one of the new streets into the court of his own house. Three rooms in a row gave onto a portico and a dismal little yard with a dingy tank below. All was new, however, and just whitewashed. A room with niches round it was cleared of the Ajuzan’s things, except his ceremonial curved sword which they left hanging on a nail. A camp bed was in one corner. In the fullness of time, a boy called Iskandar appeared with hot water, a tray and a basin: I ensured a precarious privacy by draping cotton curtains over the doorless entrances; and for the first time since leaving Iraq, found myself in the comfortable isolation of four walls. My saddle-bags disclosed in their depths a crumpled gown and a powder-puff, of which I made the best use I could, and finally emerged to meet my host more or less like a lady. He was waiting under the portico with a friend, a soft flabby young Persian of the worst kind. The Ajuzan himself, however, was a man of the world, very much on his guard, but pleasant and evidently determined to get my secrets out of me by kindness. To this I had no objection. We settled down to a general preliminary conversation, like two fencers feeling each other’s blades.

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Art Tours Worldwide

Art | Archaeology | Architecture Cox & Kings is the travel partner for the Royal Academy of Arts and our programme of small-group tours has been specially created with the Friends of the RA in mind, although they are open to everyone. The 2016 collection focuses on the art, architecture and archaeology of many of the world’s most culturally rich destinations. The tours are accompanied by expert lecturers who help to design the itineraries, give talks along the way and, in some cases, open doors that would normally be closed to the general public.

AUTUMN 2016 HIGHLIGHTS ALBANIA & MACEDONIA: Cradle of the Balkans with Dr William Taylor 23 September – 8 nights from £1,495 LISBON & SINTRA: Portuguese Palaces & Art with Dr Anne Anderson 03 October – 3 nights from £1,045 ROMANIA: Mountains, Monasteries & Medieval Cities with Rowena Loverance 03 October – 9 nights from £1,745 PERU: Pre-Columbian & Colonial Treasures with Dr Frank Meddens 03 October – 12 nights from £3,695 INDIA: Treasures of the Punjab & ‘Little Tibet’ with Jasleen Kandhari 09 October – 12 nights from £3,295 SICILY: Crossroads of the Mediterranean with Richard Wallace 10 October – 8 nights from £2,195

Duomo, Florence, Italy

For reservations, please call 020 3733 7778 For detailed itineraries and prices, please request a copy of the 2016 RA Art Tours Worldwide brochure by calling 0844 576 5518 or visit coxandkings.co.uk/ra

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