FIRE AND ICE
If the water bubbling hot around you is an unearthly blue and the sand on the beach is black, if rare moss is growing on volcanic rock and you can see glaciers in the distance, you must be in Iceland. A vast 24,000 hectares of the country forms the UNESCO-protected Thingvellir National Park. This unspoiled landscape was the setting for ancient Althing open-air assemblies, which formed the basis of government for the pioneering Viking community that lived here from around 930AD. The park is flanked on three sides by mountains and contains fissures and cliffs, lakes and rivers and, like a sleeping dragon, an active volcano. It is a dramatic and pristine natural habit that still bears the 10th- century marks of human habitation.
COLD COMFORT
It is 60 years since the death of Apsley Cherry- Garrard, gentleman explorer and author of the classic frostbitten memoir The Worst Journey in the World. It recounts his part in Robert Scott’s Terra Nova expedition of 1910–1913 to Antarctica, which Cherry-Garrard had joined aged 24 as assistant zoologist. Cherry- Garrard and his colleagues Bill Wilson and Henry Bowers risked everything over a brutal 35-day trek through blizzards to collect three emperor penguin eggs in an effort to prove the evolutionary connection
between reptiles and birds. Cherry-
Garrard recalls how his teeth chattered so violently they shattered in his head. His tale is one of bravery and ultimately tragedy amid a raw natural environment that few people ever experience first hand.
FEZ UP!
The imposing blue-tiled Bab Bou Jeloud gate stands at the entrance to the 8th-century medina of Fez, a city quarter rich in buildings dating back to Fez’s heyday as Morocco’s cultural capital. Ambitious government plans to restore the medina were drawn up in 1989, since when thousands of buildings have been saved from collapse and 27 monuments have been fully restored with World Bank funding. The al-Qarawiyyin Library, considered the oldest in the world and home to a Kufic, 9th-century Qur’an, has been saved from the severe damp that threatened it. The medina project has also rejuvenated local crafts, music and cuisine. Plan-it-Morocco can arrange guided tours, including day trips to the Roman site of Volubilis.
www.plan-it-morocco.com
ON THE TILES
What strikes any visitor to Lisbon, aside from the number of ornate, regal and imposing buildings it boasts, is that feeling that almost every inch of the city has been decorated. Portuguese tiles, or azulejos, had been used since the 13th century, but in the 16th and 17th centuries, their popularity and sophistication reached new heights. Elaborate blue and white historical tableaux covered cloisters and corridors, such as those at the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora. In the past 200 years, simpler, more geometric tiles have spread over house fronts and stations. Combine a visit to Lisbon with a ceramics course at Sedimento Ceramics Studios,
www.sedimento.pt, and learn the techniques and styles of traditional and contemporary azulejos
Architectural Traveller | Page 8
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