Photo Of The Day: Fantastic Voyage


Today’s Photo of the Day is a lovely Renaissance fresco from Rome‘s Villa Farnesina, taken by Flickr user AlexSven. It’s not the most famous artwork from the museum, that of Raphael’s “Triumph of Galatea,” but it depicts another voyage of the gods. It’s what we all hope our travel will be: swift, elegant and a bit magical. The mode of travel, chariot pulled by a pair of oxen, is as old-fashioned as it gets, and a group of hidden angels assure safe passage for the rider. May your next trip be as smooth.

Upload your magical voyages to Gadling’s Flickr pool for another Photo of the Day.

Travel Bookshelf: free guidebook to “Angels and Demons” Rome

Small press guidebook publisher Roaring Forties Press has released a free guidebook in downloadable PDF format titled Rome’s Angels and Demons: The Insider’s Guide to the Locations Featured in the Book and Movie. Author Angela K. Nickerson covers all the sites mentioned in the bestselling book, and then delves into the historical background of the real characters mentioned in the plot, such as Galileo and Raphael, highlighting sites associated with these famous figures that can still be seen today.

Dan Brown fans and visitors to Rome can learn a lot from this book. For example, the Vatican Secret Archives really exist, and they really do contain the files on Galileo’s trial. There are sections on the Swiss Guard, the Pantheon, and much more. The text is livened up with images by accomplished travel photographer Christine Cantera.

Nickerson is the author of another book on Rome (pictured here) titled A Journey into Michelangelo’s Rome, part of the ArtPlace series by Roaring Forties Press. The Artplace series are lavishly illustrated books that link a city to a famous resident, and Nickerson’s book examines the life and work of one of Renaissance Italy’s greatest artists. I reviewed that book on my own blog. Other destinations include Normandy, Ireland, the south of France, New York, California, and New England.

Visit the Prado Museum from your computer


Okay, people, Super Budget Travel time.

You may not get that great museum smell, and you won’t see Madrid out the windows, but you can now see hi res images of 14 of the artworks at the Prado Museum (Museo Nacional del Prado) on Google Earth. You can even see brushstrokes.

Click here to try it. The video above shows you how they did it and how it all works.

Kudos to the Prado for making their art so available. Even if you bought a big coffee table book of these works, you wouldn’t see detail this fine. This is an all-new idea.

The masterpieces the Prado allowed Google Earth to photograph include paintings by Rembrandt, Raphael, and El Greco. See them all really close without leaving your desk.