“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 […]
Read More Etruscan cemetery, Italian hidden treasure, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, Poggio Conte, san colomba, Tuscany
One of the interesting lost sites within an hour of Orvieto we made a Camera Etrusca excursion to the hermitage of Ripatonna. Much of what is now known as northern Latium north of Rome on the borders of Tuscany was until the 1930s a veritable wilderness. Saracen pirates had scourged the area and malaria had […]
Read More etruscan, Italian hidden treasure, Italy, Italy hidden treasure to photograph, not just photography, photo trip, photographic set, Ripatonna Cicognina, Tuscany
I have no idea why, but it was my dream as a child to find underground Roman ruins at the bottom of the garden. This dream was to come true when my wife and I moved to Castel Gandolfo in 2002. We rented a flat in the grounds of a villa once owned by Visconti, bought […]
Read More bergantino, Castelgandolfo, diana baths, domitian, goddess diana, Italian hidden treasure, Italy, not just photography, photo trip, photographic set, Rome photo workshop
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap Each in his narrow cell for ever laid The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard (written in Stoke Poges) The drift from the land from the 1950s onward has left many Italian villages […]
Read More camposanto, cemetery, chianti, gray's elegy, Italian hidden treasure, not just photography, photo trip, photographic set
Rome is known as the Eternal City and no city on earth has a comparable wealth of ancient ruins. The tireless documentor of Roman ruins Piranesi (1720-78) made a good living selling his topographical images to visitors on the Grand Tour. But whereas Canaletto used lenses and the camera obscura to ensure that his views […]
Read More Castelgandolfo, emissario, Italian hidden treasure, lake Albano, not just photography, photo trip, photographic set, Piranesi
Italy has an extraordinary amount of antiquities that are simply abandoned; no ticket office, no maintenance, no security, just overgrown. Sometimes I come across a place purely by chance, sometimes I have been tipped off by a local, sometimes because I have read about it and have made a search. I will endeavour to post […]
Read More Alban Hills, Diana Temple, Genzano, Golden Bough, Italian hidden treasure, james Frazer, Nemi, not just photography, photo trip, photographic set, rome, Rome photo workshop, William Turner
Late Spring: The Season of Wildflower in Italy. Spring in Italy may have been slow in coming this year, but all that rain means even more wild flowers – especially poppies. Come to Tuscany and Umbria in June and you will see the brightest and most colourful wild flowers anywhere in Europe. Normally poppies last […]
Read More Italian-holidays, photography-workshop, poppies-field, poppies-photos, Tuscany
Bill Emmott the former director of The Economist and long term thorn in Berlusconi’s side since he was unsuccessfully sued for libel after the magazine’s front cover said he was unfit to lead in Italy back in 2001, has made a film. The documentary about Italy and its ailing economy and woeful politics is called […]
Read More bill emmott, economist, girlfriend coma, Orvieto, video about Orvieto