Author: Ms. R.

In March 1519, guests arrived at Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi’s home in Rome to attend the banker’s lavish Carnival feast. With the pious Lenten season coming up, this would be a day for excess. The attendees expected decadent spreads of wine, meat, and sweets, perhaps even a gorgeous sugar sculpture or two. Instead, they were met with darkness. A single candle illuminated the entrance of Strozzi’s home. Confused, the guests moved up the stairs, through a black door, and……

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Excerpted and adapted with permission from Jordan Salama’s Every Day the River Changes: Four Weeks Down the Magdalena, published November 2021 by Catapult Books. Copyright © 2021 by Jordan Salama. Luis Soriano was born so premature that when he arrived into the world, everyone was sure that he would die. He was born in 1972, in the very same Colombian village of La Gloria (Magdalena Department) where he grew up and made his life. His father was a cattle……

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In the crystalline waters of the Caribbean, far from the skyscrapers and traffic of Panamá City, is a tiny, 365-island archipelago known as Guna Yala, or the San Blas Islands. Today, around 50,000 Guna people are dispersed across 49 island communities there. An indigenous people from what is now Panamá and Colombia, the Guna live today much like they have for generations. Life is mostly spent outside, with only hammocks for sleeping beside palm frond–covered wooden homes. In Guna……

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In the town of Worthing, in the lovely surroundings of the Beach House Park, stands a curious monument known as the Warrior Birds Memorial. This lush rockery garden, replete with eccentric plaques and a birdbath, was built in the late 1940s. It serves as both a memorial commemorating the heroic messenger pigeons of the First and Second World War and a space for living pigeons and other birds to enjoy.     During the war, domestic homing pigeons were heavily utilized……

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The Museum of Museums (MoM) is a contemporary art space that opened in Seattle in 2020. It has three floors and a variety of exhibitions that range from traditional art to immersive installations. In addition to its main shows, MoM houses a miniature museum called SMCA, a model apartment that houses the collection of a local artist, a children’s exhibition, a four-seat theater, and more. This Russian nesting doll of a museum is housed in a renovated mid-century medical……

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The King’s Observatory sits incongruously among golf courses close by the river Thames—a reminder that this landscape is owned by the British Crown and was once the private park of George III. The observatory was built not far from Richmond Lodge, which served as the royal family’s country residence between 1764 and 1771 before it was demolished in 1772. George III demolished the hamlet of West Sheen, and hired Capability Brown to achieve the perfect Arcadian landscape, which once……

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Barra and Vatersay are the southernmost inhabited islands in the Scottish archipelago of the Outer Hebrides. Barra having one of the three passenger airports on the archipelago, it’s one of the region’s most popular destinations despite its small size and population. For Vatersay (known in Gaelic as Bhatarsaigh), without an airport and connected only to Barra (Bharraigh in Gaelic) by a causeway, visitor numbers are somewhat smaller. With their visitor numbers combined however, both islands have managed to inspire……

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Visitors to this region will have the opportunity to stroll along the 900-year-old battlements of the ancient walled city of Beaune, the wine capital of Burgundy. Most of the ramparts remain intact and nearly encircle the entire old town center. Visitors can take in picturesque views from the ramparts that showcase tiled rooftops, private gardens, and landscaped moats. Some of the 16th-century towers, built to defend the city against iron cannonballs, are 23 feet (seven meters) thick. A walk……

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