City walls of Tarragona. Photo: TMK, December 2009. Some shots of the city walls of Tarragona, including some of the “cyclopean” bits. More below the fold. City walls of Tarragona: Masons’ marks. Photo: TMK, December 2009. City walls of Tarragona. Photo: TMK, December 2009.
Category archives: Travel
Aleppo Citadel
Main gate of the Aleppo citadel. Photo: TMK, October 2008. Here’s a good little free guide to the Aleppo citadel, courtesy of the Aga Khan Trust (via AWOL). It has excellent illustrations to help visitors make sense of the multi-period monuments on the citadel. The Aga Khan Trust has similar guides to the Castle of […]
Industrial Heritage in Barcelona
Factory facade reused as waterfall in Parc del Clot, Barcelona. Photo: TMK, December 2009. My old blog (in Danish) frequently featured posts on urbanity, ruins and urban exploration, topics that I have only rarely touched on here. Yet during a recent visit to Barcelona, I was struck by notable attempts to incorporate the industrial heritage […]
Visiting Abu Mina – A Coptic Pilgrimage Site
The new monastic complex at Abu Mina, as seen from the ruined Northern Basilica. Photo: TMK, May 2008. In a post last month, I mentioned my emerging interest in pilgrimage, especially from as seen from the perspective of material and visual culture. This interest stems, at least in part, from visits to sites that are […]
Neues Museum and Spolia
I’m just back from a seminar on spolia in Berlin, organised by Topoi. In my paper, I discussed the re-use of sculpture in late antique contexts and the life histories of individual statues. I also had the opportunity to visit the recently re-opened Neues Museum, closed at the beginning of the war and then bombed […]
Looking Up in Alexandria
Continuing the series “Looking Up” begun with Baalbek back in May, I now turn to Alexandria. The series is mostly an excuse to post some photos on the blog, but the act of looking up (to ponder the monumentality of cathedrals, mosques, artworks, etc.) is in many ways an integral part of the tourist gaze […]
The Politics of Street Signs
Street sign in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Photo: TMK, June 2009. Just another small but potent reminder of the political nature of everyday spaces in the Old City of Jerusalem: In the Jewish Quarter, the vast majority of streets (always labelled in Hebrew, Arabic and English) have had their Arabic names vandalised. […]
A Day at the Tokyo National Museum
A manuscript in the Tokyo National Museum. Photo: TMK, February 2009. Tokyo National Museum is one of the best museums I’ve visited in the last couple of years. Beautifully laid out with plenty of space around the exhibited objects (preventing the clutter effect that causes that experience of information overload in certain other museums), nice […]
Explanation Is Not Allowed
A message to interpretive archaeologists? Seen in the National Archaeological Museum, Amman. Photo: TMK, May 2009.
On The Road
The colonnaded street at Apamea, Syria. Photo: TMK, October 2008. I’m off to the Middle East tomorrow for some final dissertation travel. Meanwhile, here are some photos of the colonnaded street at Apamea. The colonnaded street at Apamea, Syria. Photo: TMK, October 2008. The colonnaded street at Apamea, Syria. Photo: TMK, October 2008. The colonnaded […]