Roman bath discovered in York

by Sean McLachlan on


The remains of a Roman bath have been discovered in York in northern England.

Archaeologists made the find while excavating ahead of construction of the new City of York Council Headquarters. York (then called Eboracum) was an important trading center in Roman times. So important, in fact, that it had more than one bath. The image above is from the basement of the Roman Bath pub, where a small museum shows off the remains of another bath.

Based on coins and pottery found at the site, the newly discovered bath dates from the late second and early third centuries AD. The site will be open to the public for free this weekend.

Unlike many Roman cities, York continued to be important mercantile and religious center in the later Anglo-Saxon and Viking periods. The Yorkshire Museum exhibits a huge collection of Viking artifacts from an earlier excavation.

Public bathhouses were very popular in Roman culture. They included cold, warm, and hot pools and places for relaxation and socializing. The best preserved example is at the appropriately named city of Bath, an easy day trip from London.

Luxury hotels in U.K., U.S. warned of ‘Mumbai-style’ terror threat

by McLean Robbins on

Authorities are warning luxury hotels to be on the watch after new intelligence obtained reveals that Al Qaeda was planning a “Mumbai-style” attack on luxury hotels, specifically The Ritz-Carlton, in London.

The information was obtained after authorities found materials at a checkpoint in Mogadishu where Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the Al Qaeda operative who masterminded the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, was killed Saturday, reported Fox News.

According to The Sun, The Dorchester on Park Lane and Eton College were also on the handwritten list.

The three days of Mumbai attacks in 2008 killed 174 people and wounded more than 300.

The FBI briefed hotel leaders in New York yesterday and has planned a similar briefing for today in Washington as well as others in major U.S. cities.

Fox reports that the latest intelligence was believed to have been found on a thumb drive at the scene of his death.

Of course, travelers are urged to take basic precautions. Read a recent Gadling article that discusses a similar topic.

Vorticism: avant-garde art at the Tate Britain, London

by Sean McLachlan on

In the years before the outbreak of World War One, European artists developed a variety of different styles to reflect the pace of change and industrialization in what used to be a traditional continent.

Cubism and Futurism were two of the biggest movements. One of the briefest and most vibrant was Vorticism. The Vorticists started around 1913 and focused on the hard lines and quick pace of the machine age.

Now the Tate Britain in London is hosting a major exhibition on the movement called The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World. It brings together more than 100 Vorticist works from all the major players.

One of the leaders of the movement was Wyndham Lewis, although some Vorticists say the only reason he was popularly seen as the leader was because he gave more interviews to the press. He was certainly important, though. Lewis was the founder of the Vorticist journal Blast, the first issue of which had a hot pink cover and featured writings by T.S. Eliot and Ford Madox Ford. A whole section of the exhibition is dedicated to this journal and its groundbreaking design and typography.

Some of the rarer works on display include those from the many women welcomed into Vorticist ranks, a daring move at the time. There are also the Vorticist photos of Alvin Langdon Coburn, often hailed as the first abstract photographs. These photos will blow your mind and hurt your eyes.

%Gallery-126430%While Vorticism was mainly a British movement, this exhibition also explores its influences on the New York modern art scene. In fact, it was an American poet, Ezra Pound, who gave the movement its name.

The output of this movement was remarkably small. Blast only had two issues, and there were only two Vorticist exhibitions. World War One killed some of the Vorticists and left others embittered against the modern world. Yet Vorticism had a major impact on modern art and its works are still discussed and copied today. The two issues of Blast are still in print almost a century after they first appeared. One advantage of its brevity is that an exhibition of this size can encompass a majority of the major works, giving the visitor a full understanding of the meteoric life of one of modern art’s most intriguing avant-garde movements.

The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World opened yesterday and will run until September 4.

[Image of Workshop c. 1914-5, by Wyndham Lewis courtesy of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust]

Five unusual destinations from London

by Alex Robertson Textor on

London is incredibly well served as a transit hub. Collectively, London airports see more traffic than any other cluster of city airports in Europe. An impressively broad network of routes connects the city’s airports to destinations across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. For anyone predisposed to travel, this range of destinations is inspiring.

Many of the world’s most visited destinations are served from London, some along multiple routes. Many others are less well known. Among these are the following five truly unusual destinations.

1. Ascension Island. This Atlantic Ocean island, hundreds of miles south of the Equator and well over one thousand miles from the African and South American coasts, hosts a joint US/UK air force military base and a European Space Agency tracking station. It is also home to one of the world’s very few GPS ground antennas. To fly to Ascension Island, hop aboard a military plane bound for the Falkland Islands at Brize Norton Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire, west of London. Upon arrival, laze about on the knockout beach above.

2. Hassi Messaoud, Algeria. Monarch flies to the inland oil town of Hassi Messaoud in Ouargla Province from London-Gatwick, though you have to book your ticket through Jet Air. This route is designed to ferry oil company workers to and fro, and you can expect to shell out just over £1050 for a round trip ticket. While this is most definitely not standard tourist territory, it might just be the ticket for oil industry hobbyists, of which there are no doubt a handful. Somewhere.

3. Tórshavn, Faroe Islands. Atlantic Airways, the Faroese national carrier, flies between London Stansted and the Faroe Islands from early June through early September. The Faroes, which lie north of Scotland, are a truly glorious (if extremely expensive) summer destination for whale watching, hiking, fishing, and birdwatching.

4. Sylhet, Bangladesh. Most of the UK’s Bangladeshi population has ancestral ties to Bangladesh’s Sylhet region. It’s not surprising then that there are links between London and the region’s biggest city, also named Sylhet. Connections are provided by United Airways (BD) (not to be confused with US carrier United) and Biman Bangladesh. United’s route stops in Dubai and Dhaka along the way; the Biman Bangladesh link is flown via Dubai. The region, known as Sylhet Division, is verdant and lush and full of tea plantations.

5. Sion, Switzerland. This tiny airport in the canton of Valais is served by just two airlines. From mid-December through April, an airline called Snowjet operated by Titan Airways connects Sion and London Stansted. Sion is 45 minutes by road from Verbier, the most stylish of Switzerland’s Four Valleys ski towns.

[Image of Ascension Island: Drew Avery | Flickr]

London’s seamy side revealed in new exhibition

by Sean McLachlan on


London has always had an underworld, a dangerous side. Just go out late on a Saturday night and you’re sure to see a fight. For many, the hint of danger is one of the city’s attractions, at least if you don’t have to deal with it full time.

Back in the 18th and 19th century, there was nothing attractive about the St. Giles Rookery. It got its name because tiny apartments were stacked atop one another like birdhouses. Only the poorest of the poor lived there–the beggars, the prostitutes, the gin addicts. Especially the gin addicts. Gin was a national addiction, a cheap way to get blasted. Gin addiction was immortalized in Hogarth’s engraving Gin Lane, showing a drunken mother accidentally knocking her baby over a railing while a tradesman hawks his tools and a man hangs himself within view of an uncaring crowd.

Hogarth was no teetotaler. He liked a good drink, as his engraving Beer Street shows. It’s the same scene, gentrified. Industrious drinkers of real ale prosper and flirt in clean, attractive surroundings. It must have seemed like heaven to the denizens of the Rookery.

A new exhibition by the Museum of London looks at the lives of these nearly forgotten people, thanks to an excavation the museum sponsored at the site of the old Rookery. London’s Underworld Unearthed: The Secret Life of the Rookery features finds from the excavation along with contemporary and modern depictions of this Hell on Earth.

The finds remind us that these were real people living here. Children’s toys, simple crockery, and trick glasses used in drinking games give us a glimpse of their lives, and the gin bottles hint at how many of them died. The modern art, created by Jane Palm-Gold, draws comparisons with today’s urban blight. The permanent collection at the Museum of London is well worth a visit too in order to get a better understanding of one of the world’s most fascinating cities.

The show runs until June 3 at the Coningsby Gallery.

[Hogarth prints courtesy Wikimedia Commons.]