Author: Rubia Tinctorum

  • Stitched up in Greece: The World’s Most Expensive Museum

    Stitched up in Greece: The World’s Most Expensive Museum

    The Embroidery Museum on the Greek island of Lefkada must surely be a leading contender for the title of world’s most expensive museum. At present, the honour is held by the Buehrle Museum in Zurich, a collection of mainly French Impressionist and Post Impressionist art, which costs about £18 to visit. At £16, MOMA in […]

  • Russian Tourists Invade Cyprus

    Russian Tourists Invade Cyprus

    SUNNY Cyprus was once a safe-haven for the English, a place where we felt at home because it was, after all, once ours. Ever since Lord Kitchener came here as a young engineer, the island has been subjected to merciless Anglicization which reached its peak in the mid-80s with the onset of mass tourism.

  • Damien Hirst: The Smell of Decay

    Damien Hirst: The Smell of Decay

    I declined the small hagiography offered at the door because I did not want to throw up over the sort of drivel which Hirst is famous, like: “You get cab drivers and stuff who come up to me and they go (sic) “What you do is not art, mate. I’m sure there were people around when they were doing it in the caves, going ‘I like your cave, but I hate that crap you’ve got on the walls.'”

  • Barbados: Don’t Bother, Frankly

    Barbados: Don’t Bother, Frankly

    The architecture is pseudo post colonial; the tree crickets are drowned by the roar of leaf blowers, hedge trimmers and lawn-mowers and the air-con ensures that warm tropical nights are a thing of the past.

  • Paphos: Sex Centre of The Ancient World

    Paphos: Sex Centre of The Ancient World

    Everyone, everywhere in Cyprus, will at some point mention the goddess, be it to sell you a villa or a bottle of wine. I challenge you to name more heavily marketed deity. But there’s nothing new under the heavens and when it comes to exploiting the famously sexy lady, the ancients were equally adept. Thanks to establishing the island as a cult centre for Aphrodite, thousands of pilgrims from all over the eastern Mediterranean were drawn to the festivals held in her name, including the four day long Aphrodisia. We might think of it as sex tourism but to the pagan societies of the period, the fornication, rituals and orgies conducted in the name of Aphrodite were sanctified as well as advantageous. Sacred prostitution, mentioned in the Golden Bough, placated the gods and protected the land from famine and drought by activating the reproductive forces of nature. Stass Paraskos, author of Aphrodite, The Mythology of Cyprus, paints an interesting picture of Paphos, a city on the west coast, which was the centre of the cult.