Olga Golubeva
Positano Couture: Boutique Hopping and a Cliffside Lunch
A private fashion-and-lunch day in Positano from Rome — couture-dress boutiques, La Sponda at Le Sirenuse, and an afternoon on the Spiaggia Grande.
Ravello Symphonies: Villa Rufolo & Villa Cimbrone Gardens
A private morning in Ravello from Rome — Villa Rufolo (Wagner’s inspiration for Parsifal), the Terrace of Infinity at Villa Cimbrone, and a summer festival concert.
Capri Private Day: Blue Grotto & Villa San Michele
A private speed-boat day to Capri from Rome — Blue Grotto, Anacapri, Villa San Michele, and lunch at Da Paolino beneath the lemon trees.
Sorrento: The Lemon Coast Before Capri
A private day in Sorrento from Rome: San Francesco cloister, lemon groves, intarsia workshop, and a long lunch in a family trattoria above the bay.
Bracciano: The Volcanic Lake and Its Hidden Caves
Lake Bracciano is most often visited by day-trippers for the Castello Odescalchi and the lakefront lunch. For the traveller in search of the slower, more naturalistic Bracciano — the volcanic caves of the southern shore, the dive sites of the central deep, the sunset cruise on the still lake under the August moon — there … Read more
Nemi: The Sacred Lake Where Caligula’s Pleasure Ships Sleep
Lake Nemi is, for the casual visitor, a quiet volcanic lake known for its wild strawberries and its early-summer Sagra delle Fragole festival. For the archaeologist, the historian of religion, and the traveller drawn to the deeper currents of the Roman past, Nemi is something more interesting: the most important sanctuary of pre-Roman Italy, the … Read more
Frascati Beyond Wine: Villa Aldobrandini’s Architectural Secrets
Frascati is, for most travellers, a wine town — and the wine, the Frascati Superiore, is sufficient justification for a day. But behind the vineyards, on the slope above the village, rises one of the most extraordinary patrician villas of late-Renaissance Italy: the Villa Aldobrandini, built between 1598 and 1602 by Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini (nephew … Read more
Castel Gandolfo Beyond the Pope: A Slow Day on Lake Albano
For the traveller who has already visited the Papal Summer Palace at Castel Gandolfo — the Apostolic Palace, the Barberini Gardens, the panorama from the loggia — there is a second Castel Gandolfo that escapes the tourist itinerary almost completely: the medieval village itself, the lake at its feet, and the slow Roman lunch on … Read more
The Russian Soul of Rome: Orthodox Heritage on the Tiber
The Russian presence in Rome is older and deeper than most travellers suspect. The first significant Russian community arrived in the 1820s — aristocratic émigrés on the European Grand Tour, painters from the Saint Petersburg Academy who came to study antiquity directly, Russian princes wintering in palazzi rented for the season. By the late 19th … Read more
Renaissance Fresco: A Private Masterclass in a Roman Atelier
A traveller who has stood beneath the Sistine ceiling, or who has looked closely at Raphael’s School of Athens in the Vatican apartments, has almost certainly wondered the same thing: how, technically, were those frescoes made? The question is not trivial. Buon fresco — the «true fresco» of the Italian Renaissance, painted directly into the … Read more