Every year 350 millions visitors cross the threshold of this unconventional ‘museum’, inaugurated in Athens in 2000. Strictly speaking is nothing but the city’s metro system but what a metro! The exhibits consist of ancient treasures (original artifacts, statues, relics of roads and aqueduct, replicas from Acropolis marble friezes, etc.) that came to light during the excavations for the construction of the tunnels along with creative works of contemporary, well-known Greek artists.
Grazzano Visconti, recent Middle Ages
It looks like perfectly medieval but it is not. Instead, Grazzano Visconti is the first theme park created for tourism purposes in the not-so-distant-past of 1900! It was then when Duke Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone (father of the film director Luchino Visconti who spent here his childhood) decided to construct a neo-medieval village around his castle. His main motivation was to preserve the original atmosphere of an Italian old-time village, that he was feared to be lost because of the industrialization. The ‘villagers’ were coming from neighborhood areas and were paid to continue their traditional professions. The first visitors belonged to the royal court and the Lombard high society.
Continue reading Grazzano Visconti, recent Middle Ages
On the footsteps of Andy Warhol
We visit the Warhol Family Museum of Modern Art in the artist’s hometown, Medzilaborce, in the far north-east of Slovakia (yes, Warhol was born Andrej Warhola and was of European origin!) and we discover why this massive concrete edifice, built among hills dotted with wooden houses in the country’s backyard could be awarded the title of the most fascinating and unexpectedly surrealistic museum in Europe.