History – Page 2 – Judy and Valerie On the Road

Thessaloniki

Sculptures

Every street you walk down has sculptures and in beautiful locations – by the sea, in squares etc. The first below is the memorial to the Jewish Greeks, the three following relate to Alexandra the Great, the fifth had no plaque but is very powerful and the last ‘Umbrellas’ was placed in 1997 when the city was the European Capital of Culture. I found an App called ‘Strolling around Thessaloniki’ which details many of the sculptures and other sights in the city.

Museum of Archeology

The Archeology museum had some very interesting collections. The photographs below come from ‘The Gold of Macedon’ tracing the use of gold through the ages, most of the artefacts coming from tombs.

Folk Art and Ethnological Museum

This museum is housed in a beautiful old building known as Villa Modiano built in 1906 by the architect Eli Modiano for the banker Jacob Modiano and which survived the great fire of 1917. The collections consist of woven textiles, embroidery, tools etc, plus replicas of the equipment and wooden machinery used in mills to grind flour, pound wool (fulling) and even saw planks of wood.

Street scenes

We spent several delightful hours wandering around the market and bazaar area in the city, it was a vibrant area with whole areas dedicated to particular products as in India.

Mycenae

Revisted Mycenae after having read Pat Barker’s Silence of the Girls. Felt we now knew more about Agememnon and the site would be more meaningful. It’s an amazing place and I get a real sense of the past from being there. The beehive tombs are extraordinary pieces of architecture and it must have been so exciting to have discovered them.

Lion gate
Lion Gate Mycenae
Grave circle
Grave circle
Back gate to the citadel
Entrance to the beehive tomb of Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra
Ceiling of beehive tomb of Clytemnestra

The museum contains some good examples of pottery 3000 years old with descriptions of history of the period.

And lastly, we stayed overnight at a camperstop by a cafe just down the road from the site. Very friendly guy running the place. It would have been better if we’d spent less time on breakfast and got to the site earlier, but what a fabulous location

Eggs and avo on toast

Epidaurus

The amphitheatre at Epidaurus is completely stunning

Ancient Messini

The site of ancient Messini was the former capital of the area founded in 371BC. It is north west of Kalamata in a beautiful location with a well preserved stadium and amphitheatre. It is not so well known as some of the other sites and had very few people. There is a small museum with several statues. Well worth visiting.

Stadium and gymnasium at Messini
Statue of Isis Pelagia (protector of sailors)
Marble statue of a priestess
Amphitheatre at Messini

Lisbon Aljube Museum – Resistance and Freedom

Clandestine printing press – drawing by José Dias Coelho which appeared in underground communist newspaper Avante 1961

Salazar came to power in Portugal through a military coup in 1926 and in 1933 established a “New State” – fascist dictatorship.

The PIDE (political police) played a major role in the state, and the building which houses this museum was used to incarcerate and torture prisoners until the revolution in 1974.

It’s a fantastic multi-media exhibition, going through the whole period, in many ways demonstrating the development of a fascist state.

So many people were murdered or just disappeared during this time and thus museum honours their sacrifice.

There is also a temporary exhibition about José Dias Coelho, an artist and revolutionary who was murdered in 1961. My father knew his family and we went to Portugal in the 60s we used to visit them

Here is a link to a song written to commemorate his life

If you go to Lisbon do visit this museum – it is an education!

Evora

We left Sanlucar de Barramada and our visit to Anne and Neil’s lovely house and entered Portugal, travelling to Evora, the capital of Alentejo, a place I’d visited many years ago in the 60s and 70s and has remained in my memory ever since.

Evora is a medieval walled town. It was a centre of trade during the time of the Moors and had its hey-day in the 14 to 16 centuries when it was favoured by the House of Avis, as well as artists and scholars. Then in 1580 Spain seized the throne, the royal court left and the town started to waste away. Its very fine old centre has been left undeveloped.

The narrow windy streets have white washed houses with either blue or ochra painted around the windows and doors.

Towering in the old town is the Templo Romano which is said to be a temple to Diana. It’s extremely well preserved and was apparently walled up in the Middle Ages to form a small fortress and then used as the town slaughterhouse! It’s pretty impressive. Throughout the whole Alentejo region you can find loads of Roman remains.

The Termas Romanas is easy to miss as it’s inside the local town hall. It was only discovered in 1987, includes a nine meter laconicum (steam room), and in 1994 they discovered an open air swimming pool! It’s quite surreal as you go into the town hall and there’s the laconicum and there are windows into people’s offices so you can look across and see them working and of course they have a window into Roman times.

All over Alentejo they have quite recently discovered both Roman and Moorish artefacts when carrying out developments.

The Capela dos Ossos is a very strange place. It’s within the Igreja de São Francisco and is a room lined with the bones and skulls of about 5000 people. It’s said it was the solution to overflowing graveyards decided upon by three 17-century Franciscan monks. It’s fairly creepy.

The Igreja de São João is a beautiful little church and well worth a visit. It has extraordinary azulejos(wall tiles) from the 18-C. It also has an underworld of an ossuary full of monks bones, and a deep Moorish cistern.

We stayed in the campsite on edge of town. It’s one of those quite old tired campsites but it was perfectly ok and an easy 20 minute walk into town. There was also a sports area nearby where we could go for a pleasant morning jog!

Toledo

Toledo is a fascinating place to visit. A completely walled hill top city with windy narrow streets, beautiful stone houses and architecture from various influences. Before the expulsion of 1492 there was a large Jewish population here with ten synagogues. After the Jews departed these were taken over and made into churches. Two have been restored. One is now a museum for Sephardic Jewry and the other is an exquisitely beautiful building with rows of arches. Apart from just wandering around the streets we visited the two old synagogues, the El Greco museum, a tapestry museum and the cathedral. Here are some photos (click on a photo for an enlarged image)

Synagogue

Museum of Sephardic Jewry

El Greco museum

The museum was thought to have been El Greco’s house and some of the rooms have been furnished with furniture from that period in addition there is a large collection of El Greco’s paintings

Tapestry museum

This museum is connected to the cathedral and contains wall coverings and also garments worn by the priests.

Toledo Cathedral

Varkala – Janardanaswamy temple

Near Varkala beach is the 2000 year old Janardanaswamy temple. When foreign tourists visit you have to wait at the bottom of the stairs while the man at the entrance sets off a fire cracker for each visitor, presumably to give warning of our visit.

The walls around the inner sanctum have hundreds of oil holders which are filled each day and the wicks are lit at 6:30.

Jodhpur fort – Mehrangarh

Joshpur fort is one of the largest forts in India and is an imposing edifice and the wall surrounding it is 10k long

It has a very interesting museum containing a variety of artefacts including howdahs (seats for people being carried by elephants), carpets embroidered with gold and silk thread, and paintings containing large amounts of tiny minature detail.

Anokhi museum of hand printing

You may have heard of Anokhi shops where they sell beautiful clothes using traditional Indian fabrics for contemporary designs. Well in Jaipur Anokhi have a very interesting museum of hand printing. It’s housed in a beautifully restored haveli and takes you through different printing techniques. They have a collection of fabrics and also have some people giving demonstrations of techniques. One man was doing block printing whilst another was making the wooden blocks used.