I was not familiar with the technique called opus sectile until I visited an exhibition in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam about Constantine’s influence on the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. Part of the exhibition was a mosaic depicting a man in a chariot and four horsemen in the colours…
We drove to Rethymnon, a small city of some 35,000 inhabitants, on a rainy day in October. Autumn was rapidly approaching on Crete and it was chilly and wet. There was a lot of traffic in the city streets and we had to drive around for quite a while before…
A conversation about the village of Fodele could be something like this: “Ah, Fodele, that’s where the famous Cretan painter El Greco was born!” “In your dreams, Nikos, he was born in Candia, present-day Heraklion.” “Nonsense, he was born in Fodele, and we have the proof! There’s a museum at…
Comparing the palace complexes of Knossos and Phaistos is like comparing day and night. Visiting Phaistos is a completely different experience. Phaistos is about half as famous as Knossos, it is much smaller, does not draw huge crowds and little to no restoration work has been carried out here. The…
A trip to Crete is not complete without a visit to the Minoan palace complex of Knossos. The first palace here was built during the Old Palace period (1900-1700 BCE). Around 1700 BCE, this palace was destroyed, presumably by an earthquake. It was rebuilt soon afterwards. The ruins we see…
Chania is the second largest city on Crete, with a population of over 50,000 inhabitants. It is also, in my honest opinion, by far the most relaxed, charming and beautiful city on the island. We drove all the way from Ligaria near Heraklion to Chania, which is about 100 kilometres…
Heraklion is the capital of Crete. With over 170,000 inhabitants, it is also by far the largest city on the island. Although there is a lot of traffic and congestion, it is still pleasant to walk through the streets of the historical city centre, where in most places only pedestrians…
Gortys, also known as Gortyn or Gortyna, was the capital of Roman Crete. It was destroyed in the ninth century by Muslim Arab raiders and the area has been uninhabited ever since. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Italian archaeologist Federico Halbherr and his team began excavating at…
Crete, like most islands in the Mediterranean, has always been a crossroads of civilisations. It has been inhabited since at least 6000 BCE, when migrants from Anatolia in present-day Turkey crossed the sea and settled on the island. Some 3000 years later, Crete was part of an extensive naval trade…
‘Filibustering’ refers to politicians holding endless speeches in parliament, touching upon all sorts of issues that are more or less off topic. The sole intention is to prevent the debate from being closed so that a vote can be called. As far as I know, we find the oldest known…
Paphos and environs are a good spot to learn more about Cyprus’ complex history. Monuments of most of the civilisations that have been present on the island can be seen here. From the cult of the goddess Aphrodite to the Lusignan dynasty, and from the Ottoman Turks to the British…
Polis is the Greek word for ‘city’ or ‘city state’. The Polis I discuss here is a town of some 3,500 inhabitants in the northwest of Cyprus. It is also known as Polis Chrysochous, ‘city of the golden land’. The town itself is small but interesting, and further to the…
Kourion – Curium in Latin – was an important city state in Ancient Cyprus. It flourished during the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, until it was almost completely destroyed by two earthquakes in the fourth century CE. A rebuilt Kourion was an easy target for Arab raiders, who destroyed the city…
Muiderberg, 27 juni 1296. Het is de vijfde dag van de gevangenschap van graaf Floris V van Holland en Zeeland. In het nauw gedreven door gewapende burgers van Naarden steken de ontvoerders op de weerloze graaf in. Het zou zo maar eens de eerste politieke moord in de Nederlandse geschiedenis…
On 22 October 1383, King Fernando I of Portugal died after a reign of sixteen years. His death effectively ended the House of Burgundy, which had ruled Portugal since the early twelfth century. The king had no male heir, just a daughter, Infanta Beatriz (1372-1408). She had been married off…
High up in the Serra de Montejunto mountain range is a building that looks a lot like a church. But it is actually an old ice factory, now a national monument. The ice produced here was used for consumption and – in the pre-refrigerator age – for cooling things. In…
Modern western democracies have a strict separation of military and civil offices, but this was not the case in the Roman Republic (ca. 509-27 BCE). It was not until the third century CE, during the Imperial era, that such a separation was introduced. During the Republican era, politicians were also…
Affirmative action in favour of minorities or the politically disadvantaged is not a modern phenomenon. It was also known in Antiquity. In the fourth century BCE, a form of affirmative action was introduced in the Roman Republic. The plans to introduce it sparked a heated debate. ‘Positive discrimination’ was just…
Rome began as a collection of villages on several hills near the river Tiber. Life there was neither comfortable, nor safe. War was always looming. Neighbouring tribes and cultures envied Rome for its favourable position on the Tiber, from which it controlled the salt trade in Central Italy. Rome itself…
Walking through the streets of Rome, visitors are reminded of Italy’s dark, fascist past in many places. I am talking about Italy in the twenties, thirties and forties of the previous century, Benito Mussolini’s Italy. Sometimes the visitor is hardly aware that he or she is near or even on…