Medieval manuscripts in Los Angeles and London

by Sean McLachlan on

Two major exhibitions on opposite sides of the globe are focusing on the art of medieval manuscript illumination.

At the Getty Center in Los Angeles, a show has just opened highlighting the burst in creativity and education in what is popularly called the Gothic period. Gothic Grandeur: Manuscript Illumination, 1200–1350 features books from this important period, when educated Europe created a huge demand for illustrated manuscripts.

Looking at these works of art instantly dispels the popular notion that the Middle Ages were a low period in civilization. In fact, it was a time of great artistic creativity and innovation. Even though the Church tried to create an orthodox mode of thinking, science and basic questions of philosophy were able to advance, albeit slowly. Even existentialism had a place. Just read the opening chapter of St. Augustine’s Confessions if you don’t believe me.

The exhibition mainly draws on Getty’s impressive permanent collection, including recent prize acquisitions such as the Abbey Bible, one of the finest Gothic illuminated manuscripts ever made. Also of interest is the Northumberland Bestiary, a mid-13th century encyclopedia of animals.

In London, the British Library is running Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination. This collection of 150 manuscripts from the library’s collection date from the 8th to the 16th century and depict royalty through the ages. Some were even owned by kings and queens, such as a psalter with marginal notations by Henry VIII. The exhibition not only covers the royalty about and for whom the books were created, but also the artists who create them. Not all were monks as commonly believed. Many books were made by professional freelance artists who hustled for commissions from the rich and powerful. Not much has changed!

Gothic Grandeur: Manuscript Illumination, 1200–1350 has two installations, one running to 26 February 2012 and the next running from 28 February to 13 May 2012. Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination runs until 13 March 2012.

Photo courtesy British Library.

Things you won’t see in Paris this holiday season: beggars

by Libby Zay on
As tourists window shop in Paris this holiday season, they won’t find any more homeless people asking for change around some of the city’s most popular areas; the French government has issued a series of decrees that ban begging around Paris’ most popular tourist and Christmas shopping spots. According to the Guardian, the Champs Elyssés was the first Paris landmark to fall under the begging ban, with Galeries Lafayette and Printemps department stores and the area around the Louvre and Tuileries Gardens soon also deemed “no-go zones” for the country’s homeless.

The news outlet writes that interior minister Claude Guéant said the anti-begging decrees were part of a “merciless fight” against “Romanian criminality,” adding that Romanian criminals account for one in six appearances in Paris courts. To target the offenders, 33 Romanian police officers have been contracted to round up beggars around the Champs Elyssés alone.
The mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, is unhappy with the new policies. He called the efforts a cheap “PR stunt” that targeted some of the city’s most well-off areas while brushing real problems in other neighborhoods under the rug. “Wanting to fight poverty by repression and fines is shocking at a time when the state isn’t fulfilling its obligations in housing vulnerable young people or providing emergency accommodation,” Delanoe told the news outlet.

Christmas in Paris: ’tis the season to be feasting

by David Downie on

It’s not that Paris doesn’t have Nativity Scenes or Christmas trees or even Santa Claus-lookalikes called le Père Noel-Father Christmas..

It’s not that Parisians don’t string blinking lights, buy extravagant gifts, throw parties, ring bells, and sing “noel-noel”. Isn’t noel French for “Christmas?” A few French faithful even attend ceremonies, light candles, observe Advent Lent, and fold hands in drafty sanctuaries that echo in emptiness the rest of the year.

But somehow in this militantly secular republic, where freedom from religion is a religion in itself, Christmas really isn’t about Christmas. Not the way “les Anglo-Saxons” seem to celebrate it.

Noel in Paris is a time for worshipping the true French cult: food and wine, la grande bouffe. It’s pagan, it’s druidical, it’s not just pre-Revolutionary, it’s possibly pre-Roman or prehistoric and thoroughly ancient Gallic, meaning totally contemporary French.

Christmas in Paris is a fattening tale of extreme Thanksgiving-like gourmandizing, gluttonizing, gobbling, gnoshing and every other imaginable variation on the theme of snarfing up and scarfing down fine edibles and nectarous potables.

Holiday food markets and an extra rasher of farmer’s and neighborhood markets mushroom in squares across the land and sometimes even fill bridges that cross the Seine. The Champs-Elysées, Trocadéro, Notre-Dame, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Place de la Nation and other history-soaked sites swarm with humanity drawn like flies to rustic stands groaning with goodies from the provinces.Stationed on a thousand sidewalks outside bottle shops, cheese shops, and gourmet specialty boutiques legions of svelte Parisian Santas-most in spiffy civvies without a trace of cotton beard-tempt you to taste or swill something seasonal and irresistible-and part with your precious euros.

On Paris radio stations it’s not sleigh bells or Christmastide jingles that delight your ears. Non. It’s nonstop advertising for les produits nobles-the French nation’s notion of upscale produce and ingredients. The list stars, of course, Champagne, Sauternes and hoary wines from mossy chateaux, foie gras, oysters, scallops, smoked salmon or sturgeon or duck’s breast, caviar, truffles, runny Mont d’Or cheese, catwalk chocolate and extravagant pastries.

Pastries!

In Paris a buche de noelisn’t a yuletide log to burn in your fireplace. It’s a dangerously caloric, creamy log-shaped cake that comes in a mind-boggling variety of sizes and flavors. Millions are consumed in the holiday season, rolled out by every baker in town.

This glad season of weight-gain actually stretches from La Fete de la Saint Martin-November 11-to Epiphany-January 6, reaching paroxysms of hedonism at Christmastide.

Saint Martin’s feast day is dedicated to — guess what? Not a holy man! It’s the official festival of foie gras, and opens the hunting season for France’s many marchés au gras, which continue into the New Year. Only in France can the concept of “fat markets” make mouths water. The French Ministry of Agriculture has a web page dedicated to this artery-plugging phenomenon but not much about the forgotten saint. The separation of things spiritual and comestible into sealed compartments is deliciously watertight.

Like foie gras, pastries bridge the holiday season. When the yuletide cake logs have burned through they are swiftly replaced in January by les gallettes du roi-“the king’s flaky pies.” They look like pork pie hats but are filled with delicate marzipan. Included in the price of your gallette you’re given a folded golden crown of paper. Whoever finds the fève hidden inside the pie-literally the fava bean, though it’s usually a ceramic token-is crowned king or queen of the day. That’s a ritual that goes way back, past the various King Louis all the way to Augustus Caesar.

Who knows how many Parisians are aware of what the gallette and fava tradition springs from, and how many care? In Paris “Epiphany” is either a revelation about a fashionable new restaurant or a slice of the king’s marzipan pie. Rarely are the arriving Magi invited to share it.

No, Santa definitely drives a refrigerated truck when he hits Paris. Maybe that’s why I decided to stay all these years.

Author and guide David Downie’s latest books are the critically acclaimed “Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light” and “Quiet Corners of Rome.” His websites are www.davidddownie.com, www.parisparistours.comand http://wanderingliguria.com, dedicated to the Italian Riviera.

Delta gives the gift of free in-flight WiFi

by Jessica Marati on

This holiday season, Delta has partnered up with eBay and Gogo to offer travelers 30 minutes of free in-flight wireless Internet on all WiFi-enabled aircraft through January 2.

Connecting is super simple: just open your browser, enter your email address on the promotional page, click the “Give Me Free WiFi” button, and boom — enough free connectivity to check your email and reconfirm your hotel reservation.

While outside websites will shut off after the first half hour, web surfers can continue to shop on eBay.com and interact with delta.com throughout the course of the flight, a part of the promotion obviously geared toward last minute holiday shoppers.


Delta currently has more than 2,500 daily flights on WiFi-outfitted planes, and inflight wireless service generally costs around $12 for a 24-hour pass. Let’s hope next year they feel extra generous and grant us free connections all year ’round.

Greek island for rent

by Melanie Renzulli on

Island-hopping around Greece is one of the most glorious travel activities imaginable until you arrive in Corfu or Santorini or Crete and realize that thousands of other holiday makers had the same idea. If only you could have an island to yourself….

Well, now you can.

Having grown tired of asking cash-strapped Athens for money, Michalis Patros, mayor of the Halki (sometimes Chalki) Islands, has decided to put one of his islets up for rent. Should the Halki municipal council work out leasing details, the tiny island of Alimnia will be available for rent beginning in 2012.

Alimnia is a 4.6 square mile (7.4km) island in the Dodecanese archipelago. Although it has been uninhabited since 1966, Alimnia is a favorite day trip for visitors to Rhodes, which is about four miles away. If you’ve ever been on a boating excursion in the Greek isles, this is one of those land masses where your motorboat or catamaran drops anchor for an hour or so in order to allow you to sun, swim, snorkel, and soak in the scenery.

Rental fees for Alimnia have yet to be disclosed, but one would have to assume renting an island for private use could be pretty pricy. It is also unclear what a potential investor would get should he or she decide to rent Alimnia. An abandoned island doesn’t have towel service and a swim-up bar, for instance. Further, I wonder how or if the Halki council will prevent day trippers from stopping by the island once it has been rented out?

At any rate, a Greek island can be yours if you can afford it. Should this scheme work, I have a feeling Alimnia will be the first of many islands up for rent as Greece looks for new ways of raising funds during tough economic times.

Photo Flickr/Francesco Sgroi