Mock Gothic Horror: painted by Whistler, photographed by Cameron, the tragic story of Christine Spartali, Contessa Cahen. Near Orvieto on a ridge looking over a deep valley into Southern Tuscany stands a sinister looking castle in the mock-Gothic style of the late nineteenth century. It once belonged to the immensely rich Cahen family, still remembered […]
Italy hidden treasure to photograph, photo trip, photographic set, photography workshop tour, photography-workshop, uncanny
A photo workshop day trip from Orvieto to the Sibilline Mountains in July. Castelluccio di Norcia is well known the world over amongst photographers for its picturesque vales of wild flowers at all times of the year – except when it is under snow which at 1500m is for most of the winter. It is […]
Castelluccio photo trip, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, photo trip, photography workshop tour
Following the ancient Via Cassia, our photography workshop follows the Grand Tour route. The Val d’Orcia, famous and beloved site of modern photographers and artists in Tuscany, to the traveller of yore it was just a desolate region to be got through. For nigh on a thousand years Rome had been the goal of pilgrims following the […]
Cassia, coaching inn, Francigena, Grand-Tour, medici, post house, radicofani, William Turner Orvieto
A photography workshop in Italy could not be based in a more appealing place than Orvieto, in Umbria, but on the borders of both Tuscany and Latium. Orvieto is girded by city walls, fortresses, towers and gatehouses. You can walk the entire circumference below the walls on an easy, well made path in a little […]
Bolsena miracle, corpus domini, june photo holidays, Orvieto, Orvieto cathedral, photo trip, photography-workshop
The ancient church occupies a site once sacred to the Etruscans. Lake Bolsena was the centre of their cult. The charm of the place lies in its desolate remoteness in the swamps near Lake Bolsena. Until the 1920s malaria was the scourge of the Italy. Often entire communities were decimated because the origins of the […]
Italy hidden treasure to photograph, lake Bolsena, photographic set, photography-workshop, san lorenzo vecchio, St Cristina bolsena, st John Baptist
Just outside Pitigliano lies the Parco Orsini commonly known locally as Stranglers Park, and thereby hangs a tale………… Orso Orsini was a prince of wild ways. Wayward brother of the cultured condottiero Niccolò, he married the beautiful Eleanora degli Atti di Morlupo, whose name was long but her life short. He strangled her in a […]
Bomarzo, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, Orso Orsini, photographic set, photography-workshop, Pitigliano, secret garden, Tuscany, Vicino Orsini
There is an extraordinary atmosphere in the sacred glade so it is no surprise that this has been a sacred place for thousands of years. The Sacred Glade was Christianised, but something of the ancient magic remained: the frescoes that remain in the church are testimony to that. The church was cut into the rock […]
archeo-acoustics, Etruria, etruscan, Ischia di Castro, paganism, phallus, Poggio Conte, shamanism, yoni
“Sunrise glowed red as I climbed along the gorge; when I reached the grove, I saw the altar slab all scattered with brightness, like the harper’s robe. I put down my load, and prayed to Apollo.” Poggio Conte will appear immediately familiar to anyone who has read Mary Renault’s The King Must Die, a novel […]
Etruscan cemetery, Italian hidden treasure, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, Poggio Conte, san colomba, Tuscany