Tod’s shoe company to restore Rome’s Colosseum

by Sean McLachlan on

The Colosseum in Rome will get some much-needed repairs thanks to the sponsorship of Tod’s, an Italian luxury shoe manufacturer, the BBC reports.

The restoration will cost about 25 million euros ($34 million). The iconic gladiator arena is right next to a busy road in a polluted city, and a subway line runs close by. Many stones have shifted and require bracing, and the whole things needs a good wash.

Don’t expect to see a dramatic change soon, though. Restoration won’t even begin until the end of 2011 and will take two and a half years to complete. The Colosseum will remain open the entire time, although some parts will almost certainly have to be put off-limits on a temporary basis.

Many of Italy’s monuments are in a sad state of disrepair. The problem received international attention last year when several ancient structures collapsed in Pompeii.

[Photo courtesy user AlexSven via Gadling’s flickr pool]

Egypt changes stance: King Tut’s tomb will stay open (for now)

by Sean McLachlan on


The famous tomb of King Tutankhamun in Egypt will remain open for the time being, the chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass announced.

While earlier this week he stated that it and two other tombs in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor would close by the end of the year, now he’s saying that they’ll close at some undetermined time in the future.

Egypt plans to build a Valley of the Replicas to show off exact duplicates of King Tut’s tomb and those of Seti I and Queen Nefertari. These and other tombs are suffering damage due to the large numbers of people passing through. The extra humidity from their breath is causing mold to grow and is damaging the ancient paintings that adorn the walls. The number of visitors to Tutankhamun’s tomb has already been limited to 1,000 a day, down from a peak of 6,000 a day.

Once the Valley of the Replicas is open, and there’s no set date for that yet, King Tut’s tomb will close to everyone except those paying an extra fee that will probably run into the thousands of dollars. The pharaoh’s mummy will remain in its tomb.

[Photo courtesy user Kounosu via Wikimedia Commons]

Egypt to close Tutankhamun’s tomb

by Sean McLachlan on


The Valley of the Kings is one of the highlights of any trip to Egypt. In this hot, dusty ravine are some of the most remarkable tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs. Paintings adorn their walls, showing the soul’s journey through the afterlife and the gods and goddesses described in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Now the most popular of those tombs is going to close. Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has announced he will close Tutankhamun’s tomb by the end of the year. Two others will also close. The brilliant paintings that make the tombs so attractive were preserved because the tombs were sealed. With thousands of people passing through every day, the tombs have become hotter and more humid. Paint is flaking off and mold is growing in some parts, as you can see from the above photo. It’s sad, but to save the tombs they have to be shut from public view.

Dr. Hawass has commissioned an exact replica of King Tut’s tomb so that visitors will get an idea what the original looked like.

[Photo courtesy user Hajor via Wikimedia Commons]

Click here to enter our contest to win 44,000 Hyatt Gold Passport Points!

Caligula’s tomb discovered? Probably not

by Sean McLachlan on

The newswires are on fire with a remarkable discovery–the tomb of the infamous Roman emperor Caligula has been discovered near Rome.

The Guardian reports that Italian police caught a man loading a Roman statue onto the back of a truck at Lake Nemi, where Caligula had a palace. They arrested him and when they examined the statue were amazed to see that the man it depicted wore caligae, a type of half boot popular with Roman soldiers. When Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was a boy, he used to tag along on his father’s military expeditions dressed in a miniature uniform. The soldiers thought this was cute and nicknamed him Caligula, which means “little boots”. The tomb robber led the officers back to the tomb where he found the statue. The police triumphantly announced that they had discovered Caligula’s tomb and the press went wild.

Not so fast, says Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard. In a post for The Times she points out that lots of statues show men wearing caligae. It was the normal footwear for soldiers, after all. She also states that since Caligula was so hated by the powers-that-be and was assassinated, it’s highly unlikely that he was given a fine tomb. More likely he was quietly buried in some unobtrusive spot like many other unpopular emperors.

Yet the story doesn’t end there. Dr. Beard admits she hasn’t seen photos of the statue or the tombs (at time of press they hadn’t been released) and until there’s a full archaeological excavation it’s impossible to say for sure whether the tomb contains the mortal remains of one of Rome’s most notorious emperors.

Caligula has always been the subject of inaccurate reporting. While there’s no doubt that his reign from AD 37 to 41 included many abuses, especially insults against the Senate, many of the charges laid against him are unsubstantiated. Some Roman writers said he slept with his sisters, but there’s no proof of this. Modern writers often say say he appointed his favorite horse as consul, but that’s a misreading of Seutonius, who wrote, “it is also said that he planned to make him [the horse] consul.” That sounds like he’s repeating a rumor.

[Photo of the statue of Caligula courtesy Louis le Grand. It is not the statue the police recently discovered.]

Archaeologists discover world’s oldest wine press in Armenia

by Sean McLachlan on

Archaeologists in Armenia have discovered what they believe to be the world’s oldest wine press. The press is inside a cave, where they found the remains of grape seeds, pressed grapes, and vines of Vitis vinifera vinifera , the same type of grape still used in winemaking today. The site is dated at 4,000 BC, about 900 years older than the previous record holder–wine from the tomb of King Scorpion I, a ruler of Upper Egypt before that country became unified.

This isn’t the first time Armenia has broken an archaeological record. Last summer archaeologists found the world’s oldest leather shoe in the same region. These discoveries are hardly surprising. Armenia is an ancient land with a rich history. It had a complex prehistoric culture that culminated in the Kingdom of Urartu in the 9th century BC. Urartu was one of the greatest ancient civilizations of the Near East.

Armenia suffered from its position between several empires, and while it was often independent it also changed hands between the Romans, Persians, Byzantines, and other powers all the way down to the Soviet Union. Now it’s an independent nation again. It also has the distinction of being the world’s oldest Christian nation, having converted in the early 4th century AD.

During all this time they never stopped making wine. They were one of the main wine producers in the Soviet Union and have since started exporting their wine worldwide. Armenian wine even spread to Africa. During the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during World War One, some Armenians fled to Ethiopia, where they cultivated vineyards. Many Armenian reds are very sweet and rich, and Ethiopian wine has a similar quality.

All of these past cultures and the Armenians’ own rich heritage has created an interesting destination for adventure travelers. Sadly I’ve never been there, but it’s been on my shortlist for years. Poring over maps and books, it’s easy to see that I’d need to spend a lot of time. The mountains offer remote trekking, there are medieval buildings to explore such as the Saghmosavank monastery pictured below, and there are even wine-tasting tours. People who have been there tell me it’s still pretty cheap, making it an attractive budget travel destination.

Maybe 2011 will be the year for me to finally get there?

[Wine photo courtesy Arthur Chapman. Saghmosavank photo courtesy Olivier Jaulent]