The very name ‘Provence’ conjures up images of brilliant blue skies, ancient golden stone villages with terracotta tiled roofs, and dazzling colours thrown into sharp relief as depicted in a Van Gogh painting. It’s a land of languid, hot sunny days, leisurely outdoor dining on wonderful food that tastes of sunshine, with the air fragrant from fields of lavender. It’s also a region whose architectural riches of its ancient past are evident at every turn.
There would be few travellers nowadays who, when they hear or read ‘Luberon’, don’t immediately conjure up the delightful memoirs by the late Peter Mayle. His first book, ‘A Year in Provence’ published in 1989 became the model for a new travel genre and spawned any number of imitators on the theme of an outsider taking up residence in a town or region somewhere picturesque such as Provence or Tuscany. Until then, the Luberon region of Provence was barely known outside France, and then mostly for its typical Provencal produce.
Trying to distil the huge number of exhibitions and concerts happening in any year in Paris into a list of highlights is an almost impossible task. This year is no exception, but any year will have so many visual feasts and surprises, it’s one of the great pleasures, and dilemmas, in planning a visit.
One of the most significant archaeological sites ever discovered in London is now open to the public beneath the stunning new European headquarters of media giant Bloomberg. Constructed around 240 CE, the Roman Temple of Mithras was discovered in 1954, when in the last hours of excavations for a new office block on a WW2 bomb site, the stone head of a handsome young god wearing its distinctive Phrygian cap was unearthed.
The wonderful thing about a city as big and as old as London, is the extraordinary diversity of attractions in so many different quarters of this endlessly fascinating city.
