Sailing through Byzantium

Another one of the wonderful things that can be found in Thessaloniki, Greece (see entries below) is a building called the Rotonda. It was constructed in the late 3rd or early 4th century CE by the Tetrarch Emperor Galerius as part of a complex that included his palace and triumphal arch. The huge circular structure may have been built to be Galerius’s mausoleum, but he never got to occupy it. The building was soon converted into a church when the Romans converted to Christianity, and the dome of the structure’s interior was decorated with sumptuous mosaics, which have been recently restored. This is a detail of one of the mosaic saints in front of an elaborate architectural backdrop.

Lost and Found

This mosaic of Christ is in the apse of a small Byzantine church in Thessaloniki, Greece which is called Hosios David. The mosaics date from the 5th or 6th century, making them very rare examples of pre-iconoclastic art. In the 8th through the 9th centuries the Byzantine Empire went through phases of iconoclastic rule. Thousands of representations in various media were destroyed by the Byzantines as those who thought god was angered by icon worship (idolatry) attempted to purge the Empire of its images. Thus few works of art from before this period survive. These mosaics at Hosios David were just covered up rather than destroyed, saving them for us to see today. Note that the image of Christ hasn’t yet become the bearded, long-haired hippie we usually associate with him; he’s a young, beardless shepherd, which is how he was commonly depicted in Christianity’s early centuries. The image looks a bit distorted because it’s in the semi-dome or apse of the church. Christ is surrounded by the symbols of the Evangelists: the lion for Mark, the winged man for Matthew, the eagle for John, and the ox for Luke.

Emperor Galerius

I’ll bet you never heard of the Roman Emperor Galerius. Unless, of course, you’re one of my nerdy art history friends. He’s certainly not one of the famous rulers. He was one of the Tetrarchs, the ‘Four Rulers’ designated by the Emperor Diocletian (in the late 3rd century CE) to govern their respective quadrants of the Roman Empire. Galerius’s capital was Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. This picture shows one of the sculptural reliefs on his triumphal arch. The faces of the figures are pretty worn, but you can make out Galerius making a sacrifice at a small altar, with attending dignitaries and devotees. Thessaloniki is a great city, with ancient ruins and lots of Byzantine-era works of art. It has both an archaeological museum and a Byzantine art museum, both very good. But the Byzantine mosaics of the churches are the best, especially the ones that survive from before the 8th to 9th century CE, when the Empire was beset with iconoclasm (see entry above).

Phaistos Disk

Knossos wasn’t the only Minoan palace on Crete (see previous post). There were also ones at Mallia on the north coast and Phaistos on the central south coast. One of the most enigmatic finds at Phaistos has been called ‘The Phaistos Disk’, a circular clay tablet about six inches in diameter. It has a series of symbols on both sides, spiraling out from the center. Nobody knows what the symbols are or what they mean. Are they hieroglyphs, words built from an alphabet, or a syllabary or other kind of code? Not everyone is convinced that it’s an authentic find, but some other artifacts have been discovered that have similar symbols. Until someone figures it out, we’ll just have to use our imaginations.

Minoan Harvester Vase

Last week I visited the Minoan palace of Knossos on Crete, a terrific site that gives a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the elite class of that ancient society 3500 years ago. It was even more informative to see the Minoan artifacts in Heraklion’s fantastic archaeological museum. This picture shows part of one of the famous finds, a small vase from a Minoan villa in the south of Crete at Hagia Triada (‘Holy Trinity’). The vase shows a procession around its body, a group of harvesters singing and carrying winnowing sticks over their shoulders, for beating the newly gathered grains and separating the wheat from the chaff. It’s thought that the vase might have been used in a fertility ritual, perhaps pouring votive wine or oil. The decoration fits with the idea of the fertility of the land and the culture’s celebration of a successful and plentiful harvest.

Santorini

The volcanic island of Santorini, or Thera, is the most dramatic of the Cycladic Islands of the central Aegean Sea. Its towns cling to the steep caldera of an ancient volcano, still active today. ‘Santorini’ is an abbreviation for Saint Irini, though many people call it by an alternative name, Thera. This picture shows the cubistic jumble of shops, houses, and hotels spilling down the slope of Oia, a town on the north tip of the main island. All seems unstable and dizzying, but millions visit every year to see the stunning vistas. A few years ago, Chinese couples come started to come here in droves to get married and get their wedding pictures taken. Now thousands come. It’s all part of the new tourist economy. Often they bring along their own Chinese photographers to document every embrace, pose, nuzzle and kiss in front of the backdrops of Santorini’s picturesque whitewashed towns.

Sanctuary of Apollo, Delphi

In the ancient Mediterranean the oracle of Apollo at Delphi was the most revered of the oracles. Even today the site draws hundreds of thousands, though not to listen to the enigmatic prognostications of the priestesses. It’s a stunning site, situated on dramatic terraces below Mount Parnassus, where mythology tells us Apollo resided with his Muses. This picture shows the theater and the temple of Apollo just below, with its few columns standing. Beyond, a stunning valley filled with olive orchards. One still gets a sacred sense of the place today, mostly because of the beauty of the surroundings and the aura of the ruins. It is the past that current visitors seek, not the future.

Temple of Athena Nike

The Parthenon is the most famous temple on the acropolis of Athens, but I’ve always been partial to the little ionic temple of Athena Nike, which stands out on a projecting bastion facing west, just above the entrance to the acropolis. Dedicated to Athena the Victorious, its scale is more human, but its position sticking out into space gives it a vista towards Piraeus and the port of Greece, as if Athena is looking out to the sea that made Athenian civilization great. It’s an amphiprostyle temple, which means it had columns on only two sides rather than all the way around, like the Parthenon (which is a peristyle temple). The bastion upon which the temple stands, though clad in marble in later centuries, was originally built by the Mycenaeans, a culture the classical-period Greeks saw as heroic. For them, the Mycenaeans were ancient (about 1000 years old) just as the Greeks are to us (about 1400 years old). So the victories of the Athenians, expressed in this diminutive and elegant temple were literally ‘based’ on their heroic Mycenaean heritage.

Victory Boy

Also in the Athens National Museum (see post below) is a life-sized bronze statue of a boy riding a galloping horse, all caught in mid-stride. The horse seems as if it flies through the air. The ancient Greeks used little boys as jockeys for obvious reasons. He looks even smaller atop the ferocious beast he rides. He is without doubt a poor slave boy, yet on this magnificent horse he’s a champion and a god-like hero. He seems as if he’s calm and knows exactly what he’s doing. His face is contorted with exertion, his mouth open and gasping as he rides to victory. He seems to look to the stands to acknowledge his fans. Despite his low social status, the sculptor captured the low-born boy’s greatest moment, which we now can appreciate 1500 years later, standing alongside statues of striding gods and posing emperors.

Athens National Museum

I just finished a great trip with Smithsonian Journeys aboard the small ship the Aegean Odyssey: a two-week circumnavigation of the Aegean Sea. Now I’m in Athens in a little apartment trying to post a few blogs before I head off again to other internet-less quarters of the world. The trip began in Athens where I took a detour to the National Museum. Everyone knows I like the details, so here’s one, a fifth-century BCE relief of some wrestlers. It’s done in white marble, but you can see traces of the paint that used to give a much different impression. The athletes have ‘archaic’ hairdos, characterized by the rows of curls, and the expressionless faces typical of that age.

Revisiting: Delphi

I’m looking forward to visiting Delphi again in about 3 weeks. It made me go back and look at some pictures from about four years ago. This picture shows part of the frieze of the Treasury of the Siphnians at Delphi, from about the 6th century BCE. It depicts the battle between the Giants and the Olympian gods. I love the lion on the far left, sinking its teeth into the side of a warrior. So much action and movement in a still image.

Revisiting: Soumela Monastery

The Soumela Monastery is found in a remote valley in northeastern Turkey, a few hours drive from the Black Sea port town of Trabzon. founded in the 4th century, it is one of the great old Byzantine monasteries, a holdover from an ancient, imperial Christianity. It seems to hang off of the cliffs of the mountain, as if by magic, but the buildings front a shallow shelf, behind with there is a cave church covered inside and outside with frescoes. It’s one of the great sites of Eastern Turkey. To see more images, check out my Gallery page.

Lines of the Times

I went for a walk today with my mum, eighty-eight years-old and still out there getting her daily exercise. She used her walker and we enjoyed the windswept Willows Beach in Victoria, BC. Winter storms had pushed up a scree of logs, which kids were using like big natural Lego blocks, building forts and tee-pees. Out on an impressive outcrop I saw signs of the great, ancient glaciers that once scoured this land. I took this picture of a rut made by an ice sheet grinding a boulder into the bedrock below, a sign of the gargantuan forces that sculpted the dramatic shores of Vancouver Island.

Almond Croissants: The Skinny

Needless to say, despite the fact that I’d attract a thousand times more blog devotees, I almost never make culinary posts. Yet maybe I should. I travel all over the world every year and I actually do eat! After a multi-year quest, I’ve finally decided to take a stand on something: the World’s Best Almond Croissant. Having said that, I’m also sitting on the fence: it’s a tie between the Patisserie Daniel in Victoria, British Columbia (in photo above; the one I ate today!) and Renaud’s French Bakery in Santa Barbara, California. They’re quite different from one another, but each sublime in its own way. In both cases, the attention to quality and detail is always apparent. Needless to say, I’m angling for complimentary croissants!

Revisiting: Egypt

These giant statues are popularly known as The Colossi of Memnon, but they actually depict the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III, who reigned in the 14th century BCE. They dwarf the mere human visitors below. Today, they stand in what seems to be a more or less empty field, but they actually flanked the monumental portal of a great temple complex. There are many legends about the statues, including ones that date back to the ancient Greeks, who claimed that the statues ‘sang’ at sunrise and sunset. Many visitors carved their names and inscriptions in the lower parts of the statues (see picture and blog below).