In August 1835 photography in the form of a calotypes was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot at his Wiltshire home of Lacock Abbey. Like any National Trust property it is a treat. Two things remain long in my mind after a wintry visit. Lacock Abbey First, at the height of King Charles I’s passion for Italian Renaissance art, the Talbot family purchased a discrete element of Mediterranean life to the so-called Stone Gallery. Here in the former medieval (nuns’) dormitory, a l

We mostly live in a monotheistic world today, quite different from ancient times. Go to an archaeology museum like the national museum in the ex-convent of San Domenico in Perugia and the prehistoric, Etruscan and Roman shrines and amulets depict a multitude of cults and dieties. There are shrines or their remnants from Neolithic to later Roman farmers, but the real treat is from the world of our immediate ancestors – from the beginnings of Italy as a nation. This is the Bel

Italy is facing elections in March. Despite a capable if discrete government today, most everyone is speculating on the musical chairs likely to happen after Italians have voted on 4 March. Italy is suffering, there’s no doubt about it. Graduate unemployment and austerity measures make these discomforting times for those who remember the good years and forget the profligate state loans that now impede real growth. Yet tourism is on the increase, and today, in Naples, I saw th

Leiden University’s Frans Theuws is one of Europe’s most cerebral archaeologists. What makes him interesting is that he is fascinated by developing new ideas about the origins of Europe from a combination of his own historical reflections, his excavations and archival research. His new book is a major archival study of the 1969-70 excavations at the Vrijthhof square close to Saint-Servatius in Maastricht. Now Maastricht, famous for its role in the making of the European Union