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Oliver Arditi

Writing all the things.

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Category: Museums

Roman holiday

It’s a long time since I’ve been to a museum or a gallery, what with global pandemics and everything. We … More

Corbridge Roman Town, English Heritage, Hadrian's Wall

State of the planet

At the age of eighteen I was a dope-smoking, layabout, benefit-scrounging squatter. During this phase of my life I was … More

Foster + Partners, Kim Stanley Robinson, Moving to Mars, The Design Museum

Capitalising on the dark

Darkness is an abundant resource during December in Edinburgh. To many of the city’s residents, trapped in an indoor workplace … More

Christmas at the Botanics, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

For the birds and bees?

Money, it’s a gas Grab that cash with both hands, and make a stash – Roger Waters Generally speaking, I … More

Bank of Scotland, The Museum on the Mound

Journey’s end

Eight kilometres to the north, and many lifetimes away from Noto, lie the remains of its corpse. Here was journey’s … More

ancient sites, Architecture, baroque, baroque architecture, buildings, Noto, Noto Antica, ruins, Sicilia, Sicily

The island’s amnesiac heart

At the approximate heart of the island of Sicily there is a site which it is hard not to regard … More

Ancient Rome, archaeology, Classical archaeology, Classical architecture, mosaic, mosaics, Sicily, Villa Romana del Casale, wall painting, wall paintings bikini girls

The bright glare of professionalism

We were welcomed to the (deep breath) Antonio Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum of Palermo by a dole of small turtles, … More

Antonio Salinas, Antonio Salinas Regional Archaeological Museum of Palermo, Arabo-Norman archaeology, Arabo-Norman architecture, archaeology, Classical architecture, museum review, museum reviews, Palermo, review, Sicily

Time travelling curatorial aesthetics

The visible surface of a museum, which is to say its collections as they are displayed, tells you what sort … More

Baroque art, Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, medieval art, museum review, museum reviews, Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo, review, reviews, Sicily

Traversing epistemologies

The Cattedrale di Palermo is a chimaera of architectural styles and periods. If someone had drawn it from their imagination, … More

baroque architecture, cathedrals, churches, gothic architecture, medieval architecture, Palermo, Sicily

History, re-mediated

‘Palazzo’ is a term that is bandied about quite casually in Italy, and although it is technically cognate with ‘palace’, … More

Arabo-Norman architecture, Capella Palatina, history, Norman Sicily, Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo, Sicily

Hybridity reified: a cosmopolitan architecture

Like the gardens of the Orto Botanico, the formal beds and pathways through which one approaches the facade of the … More

Arabo-Norman archaeology, Arabo-Norman architecture, Castello della Zisa, Palermo, Sicily

A ruptured order

A melancholy sense of lost hegemony and deteriorated grandeur was brought to Britain from southern Europe by the Grand Tourists … More

Orto Botanico di Palermo, Palermo, Sicily

Moments of erasure

Facing across a busy Palermo street narrow enough to deny its facade any commanding sightlines, the Palazzo Riso-Belmonte is also … More

baroque, baroque architecture, Circle of Life, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea della Sicilia, Palazzo Riso-Belmonte, Palermo, Richard Long, RISO, Sicilian Baroque, Sicily

A life lived among relics

Apparently I’ve been to Anglesey Abbey before, according to everyone else in my family who I am claimed to have … More

Anglesey Abbey, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, National Trust
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