Including beautiful full-color reproductions of the artworks, A Month in Siena is about what occurred between Matar, those paintings, and the city. That month would be an extraordinary period in the writer’s life: an exploration of how art can console and disturb in equal measure, as well as an intimate encounter with a city and its inhabitants. This is a gorgeous meditation on how centuries-old art can illuminate our own inner landscape—current relationships, long-lasting love, grief, intimacy, and solitude—and shed further light on the present world around us.
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Return comes a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and life.
Listen to an excerpt below:
After finishing his powerful memoir The Return, Hisham Matar, seeking solace and pleasure, traveled to Siena, Italy. Always finding comfort and clarity in great art, Matar immersed himself in eight significant works from the Sienese School of painting, which flourished from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Artists he had admired throughout his life, including Duccio and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, evoke earlier engagements he’d had with works by Caravaggio and Poussin, and the personal experiences that surrounded those moments.
Hero Traveler’s favorite places to visit and things to do in Mongolia include:
UlaanBatar, Gobi Desert, Ugly City Eagle Hunters
“Through Our Lens'” celebrates the beauty of a destination through the point of view of one of our spirited creators. Come along with filmmaker and Hero Traveler Contributor Kay Van Huisseling as he takes us on a breathtaking cinematic journey through Mongolia.
Once owned by the Medici family, this 2,700-acre, 800-year-old medieval village in Montaione fell away from the public eye—that is, until lifestyle hotel brand TUI Blue saw its potential. With the help of the surrounding village’s government, the town has been resurrected into a sprawling five-star resort. Il Castelfalfi, the region’s first new-build hotel in years, offers suites with both sunrise and sunset patio views. Across the street, a disused tobacco factory is now an adjacent boutique hotel, ruinous farmhouses have become holiday homes, and acres of surrounding lands now make up Tuscany’s largest golf course.
The property feels miles away from anywhere thanks to the rolling hills that surround it on all sides, but the village offers a few quaint distractions including a small alimentari (grocery store) as well as a pizzeria, Il Rosmarino. At the entrance of the village is the tower of the ancient castle, La Rocca, now home to La Rocca di Castelfalfi, whose patio is a beautiful place to watch the sunset over Tuscan specialties like Ribollita and ravioli.
This is kind of what I felt during my holidays in Madagascar. This is certainely one of the most exciting thing I saw and I try to resume it in 2 minutes.
I decided to edit in an optimistc way despite what you can hear about this island. I choosed this point of view cause Malagasy people transmitted to me their strenght and their way of life.
Some sounds were recorded directly. For example what you can hear at 1:12 is the yell of the biggest lemur, the Indri Indri. Their yell can be heard from 5 km !
I spent a couple of days compiling clips of Chicago and put it all together into one minute. This is a combination of Time Lapse, Hyperlapse and Video created using Nikon, Timelapse Plus, Syrp Genies and Osmo Pocket. Locations are The Chicago Cultural Center, The Flamingo at the Federal Building, The Bean, the Chicago Skyline from the Planetarium, the Chicago “L” train, and sunrise from the Sheraton Grand Hotel.
A will to avoid traveling absurd distances had informed our itinerary, but in Mongolia, it seems, you can’t get anywhere without one hell of a journey. The arena for this particular expedition was the Khar Us Nuur National Park. Accessible by road from the dusty town of Khovd, itself a two-hour flight from the capital, Ulaanbaatar, the park spans a transitional zone between the Altai highlands and the Gobi Desert. In the company of our driver, Gala, my friend Marcus and I had set out to experience three of Mongolia’s predominant habitats—steppe, mountains and desert—in the space of one drivable circuit.
WE HAD already been driving for three hours when the lake appeared in the heat-shimmer and the pink smear behind it resolved into sand dunes. I guessed it would be around 10 minutes until we reached the shore. Fifteen tops. We arrived at the water’s edge two hours later. On the empty plains of Western Mongolia, perspective is illusory, patience a necessity.
We headed west and hugged the shallow shoreline, casting at shadows of fish as the sun mixed with clouds making it more difficult to sight fish. We curled around a point of land I instantly recognized as Cambridge Beaches, where I stayed with my parents on my first visit to the island and where my sister celebrated her honeymoon.
Mr. Linnell used a push pole to move the skiff quietly along shore as he chatted up guests snorkeling nearby, expertly keeping them away from our bonefish spots by urging the snorkelers to take in sights a safe distance away.
I HAD NEVER considered fly fishing for bonefish in Bermuda. Chasing the elusive, silver-green creatures, prized for their fight, was something you did at remote outposts and rustic camps, where showering was optional and accommodations primitive. Such a trip could be fun for a few days, but you’d never dare drag your wife or kids along.