How to time travel your way back to Renaissance Florence

The first patrons to pit Raphael and Michelangelo directly against each other were the wealthy Florentine fabric merchant Agnolo Doni and his new young wife, Maddalena Strozzi. Soon after he came to Rome, they commissioned Raphael to paint their portraits against an idyllic Tuscan landscape.  At the same time, they commissioned Michelangelo to make what […]

How to explore the ‘lost’ waterways of the Midlands

You should never be in a hurry on the canals. I had nowhere particular to be before nightfall, as long as it offered a pleasant rural view and relative peace. In the end I moored not far above the locks, the M1 a white noise in the background, with a view of fields and oak […]

How to be the sort of tourist Italians love

A friend who lives in the centre of Florence came to dinner the other evening. We got to talking about tourists. “I can’t take it anymore,” she blurted out. “Just getting out of the front door has become an issue… then you queue for ages just to buy a loaf of bread, the prices are […]

How to stay cool and treat heatstroke during record-breaking temperatures | Climate News

Heatstroke is a severe medical condition that occurs when a human body’s internal temperature exceeds 40C (104F). Here are some tips to help minimise its risk. As summer temperatures soar in various regions across the globe, with some even shattering all-time heatwave records, staying cool becomes crucial. Fortunately, there are effective methods to beat the […]

How to get a lovely hotel room in Europe for under £150 a night

But it’s not just good food and good times here. Cofoco is serious about its sustainability efforts too. All its restaurants and the hotel are powered from a huge solar park it built out of town, planting a tree for every stay and offering 10 per cent off for guests who arrive by bike. Book […]

How to maximise your May Bank holidays – without paying a premium

Book it: Red Savannah (01242 787800; redsavannah.com) offers a week in a Grand Luxury Villa at Sugar Beach from £5,750 per person, based on two people sharing, including international flights and airport transfers. Five affordable family holiday ideas This year, the May half term for England and Wales begins on Friday May 24 and ends on […]

A beginner’s guide to Crete – including how to avoid all the other Brits

If that sounds too much like hard effort under the Mediterranean sun, Inntravel (01653 617 001; inntravel.co.uk) looks to the opposite end of the island, and at a far slower pace, with “Crete’s South-West Coast” – a seven-night self-guided getaway which wanders the hillsides above Paleochora, taking in the Lissos Gorge and the ancient ruins […]

How To Hurt Your Own People

Today, France and Germany enjoy a stable and positive relationship, but between 1870-1945, rivalries … [+] and territorial disputes led to three devastating wars. A country that defines itself by territorial expansion or by grievances limits its international reach and hurts its own people. Albert Bettanier: The Black Stain (1887); Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin. The […]