Maheshwar is one of the most enchanting places in India, not far from the city of Indore and others built not by a king but by a queen. At the end of the 18th century, the Maharani of Indore, Ahilya, was a widow and the regent of her young son. Over the years, she exercised…
The Baroness Buxhoeveden once shared with me from her passionate memory an extravagant anecdote. She was a child, and still living with her grandfather in the country near the Volga. “I often rode the pony that my grandfather gave to me. He was incredibly fast. One autumn day, when I was only six years old,…
Having previously posted my memories of Palmyra, which has since been destroyed, I wish to do the same for Aleppo, a city I knew it all its glory, which is unfortunately succumbing to the same fate, progressively crumbling and collapsing before our eyes under the weight of civil war and bombs. The Souk of Aleppo…
In 1948 we left Spain, crossing the Bidassoa bridge on foot while dragging our luggage to catch the train to Paris. There were still, on certain streets, slabs of wood that had been installed at the turn of the century to damped the sounds of the large wheels of the horse drawn carriages. I remember…
In 1944, my grandmother, our host, informed us that she no longer had enough money to support us. In reality, the war had interrupted all international financial transfers. We now had to find another refuge. Everyone left in different directions. My mother took me to Malaga, in Spain. Franco was ruling. After his victory over…
In 18th century Naples, the largest building was not the Royal Palace, as many would expect, but rather the Albergo dei Poveri, the Hospice for the Poor. It’s a great compliment to the royal family that financed the building, and King Charles III in particular, who came up with the idea. Yet the construction of…
My parents were living in Rome when I was born in January of 1939. In January of the following year my father died, and my mother decided to move to Greece, owing to the wishes of my father that I be raised Greek. But she received word from Greece that the situation was much too…
Extract from my diary, Palmyra, February 10, 2002. The ruins were charming last night, illuminated by the distant street lamps, but this morning they were beyond compare. I left at seven thirty, it was already broad daylight, and there I saw one of the most beautiful sights in my entire life. The columns of the…
The obedient and submissive posture adopted by the Oudh kings proved insufficient in the eyes of the English. After dethroning the last of them, Wajid Ali Shah, they annexed his kingdom, and unwittingly set off a chain reaction of events. It all began with a rumor that spread amongst the Indian soldiers, the Sepoys,…
During the Middle Ages, the Crusaders, while on their way to liberate Jerusalem, repeatedly stopped and conquered small parts of the Byzantine Empire, establishing principalities and naming rulers. Consequently, many French, Spanish, and Italian colonies were to be found scattered throughout Greece, the legacy of which is seen today through the number of Catholics in certain areas. They built fortified…