The library built in the central German city of Weimar in the latter decades of the eighteenth century by Anna Amalia, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, is one of the world’s cultural treasures.
Philly Eats, High and Low
“I once spent a year in Philadelphia. I think it was on a Sunday,” W. C. Fields said sometime in the early 1940s. Fields, born in Philadelphia and tied with fellow native Man Ray for recognition as Philadelphia’s merriest Dada prankster, was right about the city back then, but this is now. Philadelphia is booming, and so are its restaurants. …
Sites along the Schuylkill
The story goes that the Dutch, sailing up the Delaware River, missed the marshy entrance to its largest tributary. Upon discovering their mistake, the Europeans dubbed the waterway the Schuyl Kill, or “Hidden River.” The Dutch were soon squeezed out of Pennsylvania by the Swedes and then the English, but the name somehow stuck, showing up as the “Scool Kill …
The Fabric Workshop and Museum
At the moment, Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop and Museum has a national reputation though it is less well known around town. In one respect it is a little like its founder, the late Marion “Kippy” Boulton Stroud, who was both bold (and bossy) but surprisingly self-effacing. Unlike the Rosenbach or the Barnes, to name two of the city’s other idiosyncratic museums, …
Mount Vernon Comes to Freeman’s
Despite its dainty name the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association is not an outfit to be trifled with. Nor is it one to do anything by half measures. Founded in 1858, it is comprised of twenty-seven members, each representing a state in the union at that time, who approached and still approach the project of preserving George Washington’s estate with an almost …
The Seductions of Budapest
It is easy to succumb to the beauty of Budapest, Hungary’s capital city, which straddles the legendary Danube River flowing down from Germany out to the Black Sea. High on a hill on the Buda side stands the Buda Castle, erected on the ruins of former royal palaces going back to the thirteenth century. It is answered across the river …