A handful of bits and pieces relating to Italy have appeared while I’ve been on my recent Italian research trip…

8 Italian masterpieces that barely survived

War after war, occupation followed by revolution, bad luck combined with bad judgment — all have contributed to the destruction of Italy’s art treasures. A fire in the Sala del Scrutinio and the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in Venice’s Doge’s Palace destroyed several Titians as well as work by Bellini, Gentile da Fabriano, and Pisanello. A half-crazed Botticelli tossed several of his own “decadent” works onto the Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497.

Italian art has, unfortunately, not been immune from the turbulent influence of the peninsula. But the history of Italian art and architecture isn’t short of happy endings, either. Many works we admire today have dodged a bullet or two during the journey to the 21st century.

Every ski season around 490 scheduled flights from the UK land at Caselle, 10 miles north of Turin’s city centre. Charter airlines also use the airport as a jumping-off point for Valdostan resorts like Courmayeur and Cervinia or the Milky Way ski area, and few passengers ever need make the short journey into the city centre.

Which is a shame. Under-rated Turin is northern Italy’s culinary capital, a Wonka-esque paradise for chocolate lovers, home of Europe’s longest-lasting royal house, Catholic Christianity’s holiest relic, and the best collection of Egyptian artefacts outside Cairo.

So, my advice for this winter’s skiers is to book the last flight home (Ryanair’s late Stansted departure is 8.30pm), deposit your bags at the airport early and make the 19-minute train ride into town your first departure of the day.

Read the rest at Timesonline

If you love Renaissance art, a trip to the Uffizi is a no-brainer. In no other world museum is time so tangible. Walking from room to room, you’ll see painting transform itself from the Gothic of Andrea Orcagna and Lorenzo Monaco through the High Renaissance of Botticelli and Michelangelo to the 16th-century Mannerism of Pontormo and Andrea del Sarto.

Alas, however, thanks to the wheeze of bolting on compulsory entrance to temporary exhibitions, a ticket now costs €10 with a €4 booking fee (essential if you want to dodge a biblical queue) on top. Ouch.

Tickets to the Accademia, Michelangelo’s marble showcase, work the same. The churches of Santa Croce and San Lorenzo, for exemplars of Brunelleschi‘s chapel architecture, are €5 and €3.50 respectively. Even the Dominican church (€2.70) and cloisters (€2.70) of Santa Maria Novella, home of frescoes by Ghirlandaio (Michelangelo’s teacher) and Uccello, charge visitors to enter.

Add all that together and a long day touring Florence’s marquee museums and churches could relieve you of almost €40 a head – before you’ve browsed one gift shop. To enjoy the greatest artists in the world, admittedly. Whose work you couldn’t possibly see, in a city as notoriously pricey as Florence, for free.

Or could you?

Read the rest in The Times

So, who wants to hear a joke?

Q: What’s the difference between libertarianism and anarchism?

A: Under anarchism, the poor people get to shoot back.

Boom, boom. I guess that’s more a caricature than a joke, as such. Anyway, I’m not here for the standup. What I want to address is the arts, partly by way of reply to Chris’s post here last week, specifically the estimable libertarian objection to arts funding. In libertopia, arts funding is for private individuals. “There is no such thing as society” (some of them really write stuff like that, non-ironically), so spending on the collective is wasted. Immoral. Theft. In any case, the Dead Hand of the State (10,300 Google hits for a phrase I’ve never heard anyone actually speak) can only have a pernicious impact on private interaction, and what could be more private than art?

Let’s look at some evidence. [Read more →]

The monastery of Poblet sits on a ridge above the village of L’Espluga de Francol, Catalonia, in the hills of the Conca de Barbera.

As I arrive, its fantastical towers and fruit groves are shrouded in soupy morning mist. Opposite the main gate, a grim stone cross is flanked by seven squat firs and the crows huddle together on telegraph wires against the chill north wind.

From the 12th century the Cistercian monastery was the final resting place of the kings and queens of Catalonia and Aragon. It was built on the site of a miracle. A holy hermit named Poblet was captured and imprisoned by the Moors, but angels appeared three times in the night and broke his chains.

His captors, impressed, granted him freedom. After the re-conquest of the area in 1149, Ramon Berenguer IV ordered that a monastery be built on the sacred ground. That, anyway, was how Richard Ford told the story in his 1845 Handbook for Travellers in Spain. [Read more →]

Cava. The fizz that does the biz without breaking the bank. You might crack open a bottle on a friend’s – but not a really good friend’s – birthday. Or at Christmas – especially at Christmas. Seven bottles of Cava equals one of Champagne. You do the maths. But to a Catalan, Cava means something altogether different. Catalans treat it with the sort of reverence Brazilians reserve for Candomble or the French for the Tour de France.

Were it not for just one building, Sant Sadurni d’Anoia, the home of Cava, might be just about the wine world’s most forgettable town. Driving through the Penedes in February, I’m too late for autumn’s ochres, too early for the first emerald shoots of spring. Slate-grey town blends colourlessly into muted green countryside, the only punctuation those regimented rows of gnarled vines.

Cava was first made here in 1872. Josep Raventos, back from working in France’s Champagne region, brought the techniques home to the family business. Within a decade, his xampany was a sensation – and Codorniu has become the world’s biggest producer of sparkling wine. [Read more →]

On a clear morning, the last two hours of the flight into Cape Town are unforgettable. From seven miles up, I can see the lunar landscape of Namibia’s skeleton coast and the gaping mouth of the Orange River emptying into the Atlantic. Nearing our destination, Table Mountain, its peak obscured by a wispy tablecloth of cloud, is set in sharp relief by the pale-pink light of dawn.

The road east from the airport takes me past the shameful townships of the Cape Flats. Nyanga, Crossroads and Mitchell’s Plain finally give way to the sharp climb into the Overberg. Stopping at the top of Sir Lowry’s Pass to admire the view across False Bay, it’s almost possible to convince yourself that the degradation of what you have just seen isn’t real. Almost.

But, despite the wild beauty of the Garden Route, it’s not by clinging limpet-like to the shore that I am going to find what is truly unique about the Cape. For that, I head just a little inland. [Read more →]