Small Things Not-Forgotten
Herculaneum. The unprepossessing 1970s antiquarium at Herculaneum was intended to be a museum. But this never happened and crowds of visitors bustle by to enter the ‘lost’ sea-town without noticing its existence. Now it has been given a new lease of life with an exhibition – “Splendori. Il lusso negli ornamenti a Ercolano”. Hydra Beginning with a statue of Hydra found largely undamaged in the Villa of the Papyri, coquettish in a diaphanous dress, this exhibit is a rare joy. T
Easter egg hunts at Stourhead
Easter egg hunts have brought swarms of families to Stourhead on a radiant April day. How Richard Colt Hoare (1758-1838) would have marvelled at the enduring wonderment his legacy has brought to his Wiltshire home. Stourhead House I have a copy of his travelogue through Italy, Recollections Abroad and A Classical Tour through Italy and Sicily (1815), made in the aftermath of family tragedy. This hefty leather-bound tome contains carefully chosen words that formally give you o
Investing in the Romans at Chedworth
I have been visiting Chedworth Roman villa on and off for half a century. One of the walks featured in my 1975 book, Walks in the Cotswolds, starts and ends at this elegant villa tucked at the far end of a canonical Cotswold coombe. The site model Over the years the villa has achieved a kind of celebrity status, exceeding its actual merits as a monument. Since its discovery in the Victorian age and acquisition by the National Trust in 1924, it has attracted the great and good
Celebrating the Box Archaeological and Natural History Society
52 years ago Henry Hurst, a young postgraduate at London University, arrived in my village to undertake an emergency excavation on a Roman villa. Much of the sprawling villa had been found in the 19th century and extensively excavated in 1902-3 by John Hardy, the village grocer, and then published by a conservation architect, Harold Brakspear. Box excavations c1902 The excavations prompted me, at school at Bath, to form an archaeological society in our Wiltshire village, Box,
ROME’S SMALL THINGS FORGOTTEN II
Not so many walking routes taken you over Tiber Island. But once there you discover a hamlet on a minuscule footprint elevated high above the racing waters. At the island end of the Pons Cestius (as it was known) – a bridge with late Republican roots, but much restored when the Tiber works were made by the new government of Italy in the late 1880s – is a staircase down to water’s edge. Pons Cestius The iron gate suggests this is really off limits but, of course, it isn’t. A w
ROME’S SMALL THINGS FORGOTTEN I
It is too easy to take Rome for granted. Huge monumental ruins dwarfing the smaller details soon become the stuff of living or visiting the city. So the Largo Argentina gets ignored, as I’ve noted in the past. This week I have had to attend regular meetings in the Ministry of Culture in the Collegio Romano. By far the most precious aspect of this regimen has been my daily perambulation through the city. It is the detail of the lost Roman metropolis that has come to fascinate
