• Stone church with a tower and stone cross in front
    History,  Mexico,  Monday walks

    A stroll around Villa Coyoacรกn

    Some ten kilometres or so south of the centre of Mexico City lies historic Villa Coyoacรกn. Today it is a picturesque corner of the wider conurbation but was once a village in its own right. It was founded by the Tepecana people on the shores of Lake Texcoco, a huge lake now largely drained, its area occupied by Mexico City.

  • Fountain in a small park with elegant houses around
    Architecture,  History,  Lens-Artists,  Monday walks,  Paris,  Street photography

    A stroll through more of the Marais

    The Place des Vosges must be one of the most beautiful corners of this beautiful city. Like the Place Dauphine it owes its existence to the city planning ambitions of Henri IV. It was laid out as an elegant residential square where the upper echelons of Parisian society could live and socialise. Much has changed since then, not least due to the Revolution, but it remains as elegant as ever.

  • Low blue house with tiled roof
    Architecture,  Bulgaria,  History,  Monday walks

    Koprivshtitsa: a Bulgarian time capsule

    Koprivshtitsa is no ordinary town but rather a time capsule. Several of its houses are associated with significant players in the 1876 April Uprising against Ottoman rule. The uprising failed, but a fire had been ignited. The brutalities committed by the Turks while suppressing it led to widespread condemnation across Europe which was the trigger for the Russo-Turkish War. This ended in Turkish defeat. Thus the April Uprising can be regarded as having eventually achieved its original aim, the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire.

  • Brick church with domes against a blue sky
    Bulgaria,  History,  Postcards from the road

    A postcard from Sofia

    Is it ever OK to be late? It’s something I try my very best to avoid, but occasionally it can be a good thing, as in the case of Boris III of Bulgaria. This is the Hagia Nedelja church. The previous church on this spot was destroyed in a terrorist plot in 1925 to assassinate the king, Boris III. He was attending the funeral service of General Konstantin Georgiev, who had been killed in an assault two days previously, on 14 April of that year. The group from the Bulgarian Communist Party knew that in killing such a high powered…