The ruins of Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans

LoveThesePics has a pretty amazing article with photographs by several photographers of the abandoned Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans.

Go here to read the article and see the images...

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Ruins: The Temple of Apollo at Corinth, and the Corinth Canal

By Jack Brummet, Travel Editor

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This is a photo from our first trip to Greece.  It is a distant view, at dusk, of the ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Corinth.  And one of the first (of many) ruins I would visit over the next 30 years.  As beautiful as this is, Corinth is also the site of the pretty amazing Canal of Corinth (see photo below), which was completed in 1893.  It is a pretty amazing thing to see--and think about what they had to do in the late 19th century to remove all that rock.

After 14 months without visiting any ruins or ancient sites, I am getting itchy feet...

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Painting: The collonades at the Ephesus, Turkey ruins

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Last day in Athens: The National Archaeological Museum and ruminations of the renaissance of Athens

You may have noticed already, but one of my favorite modes of ancient art is the relief frieze. This is an excellent example of one, and yet they still lose their extremities...fingertips, nipples, noses, and penises seem to suffer the most from those tumbles to the ground, and from being battered by other marbles. Click to enlarge.

On our last day in Athens (July 17th), we went, via bus, to the National Archaeological Museum. This massive and comprehensive museum would take three days to go through wth any real scrutiny. We did it in a few hours, by focusing on the artifacts and antiquities we were really interested in, and especially those from the many ruins and excavations we had visited the previous month in both Asia Minor and in Greece.

The best part of the museum, by far, is the massive collection of statuary from Cycladic and earlier periods, up to a huge collection of Roman and Greek sculpture. You see a lot of the statuary you've seen in books, in art history class, and on book covers (of Penguin books and literary anthologies). After three hours, you are completely weary and there are still whole collections and periods of antiquity you've missed. I am posting photos of some of my favorites...but hundreds of my favorites aren't here. You'll just have to go to the museum if you get the chance. If you ever do get to Athens (and I highly recommend it), and you only have a day, split it between the Acropolis and the Museum.

Before I go onto the handful of photos, I wanted to say one thing about Athens. When I was there 25 years ago, it was a congested, hot, smelly, polluted town. Over the years, and especially before the Olympics, they have fixed a lot of that. The pollution was not all that much more than any city. They have implemented restrictions on cars, and they have created many pedestrian streets with no cars at all. And on top of that, for the first time in a month, we could actually drink tapwater! And it was great. It was such a great surprise to see the progress Athens had made. When Keelin originally scheduled us for three days there, I was very skeptical. As it turns out, I could have stayed there a week. The subways and buses are good, and if you stay in the Plaka, you can walk almost anywhere you need to go. Highly recommended!



Cycladic statuary (from the Cycladic Islands, like a couple we visited, Santorini and Rhodes). One of my favorite schools of sculpture. I love the abstracted, gestural figuration. Click to enlarge.


A bronze Zeus. You've seen this one on the cover of Penguin Books and literary anthologies. Click to enlarge.


Jack Brummet on the rooftop of our hotel, with a close view of the Acroplis' less-flashy backside.


A bust of Caligula (or head from a statue), from the 1st Century. Click to enlarge. This is one of my favorites, probably because I've read a few books about this mad emperor.


This is allegedly (although highly unlikely) Agamemnon's pure gold death mask, recovered from Grave Circle V, from the 15th Century BC. Note: the two holes were used with string to hold the mask to the deceased's face. Click to enlarge.


I loved this fantastically sculpted bronze of a horse and jockey recovered from a shipwreck. This was sculpted sometime in the second century BC. Click to enlarge.

I'll post some more favorites when I get out photos sorted out... /jack, in Seattle
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Sitia, Crete, and Minoan ruins at Kato Zarkis

a cemetary in a village in the mountains near Kato Zarkis - click to enlarge

Another view...of family tombs at a roadside church - click to enlarge

Yesterday, we drove from our aparment in Sitia about an hour along the rugged, twisting, coastline, up and down steep, rocky hills, to another Minoan Palace. The palace at Kato Zakris is roughly 4,000 years old, and was probably destroyed by the cataclysmic volcanic explosion from Santorini/Thira in 1650 B.C. The volcanic explosion is said to have been the strongest ever on earth.

Zakris is an extensive ruins, far less reconstructed than the one at Knossos. Two nights from now, we will be staying on the very rim of the caldera formed on Santorini when the volcano exploded and blew a gigantic hole in the middle of the island. The hole—a calderas--filled with seawater. Our hotel in Thira is 30 meters from the edge of the caldera. That volcanic blast wiped out most of the Minoan civilizations along the Aegean.

Click to enlarge. Jack and Keelin Curran at the Minoan Palace at Kato Zarkis

We are currently staying in Setia, Crete, a little-touristed, sleepy, 8,000 person town, lined with great beaches (including an almost deserted one right near our apartment). It’s great swimming here, in the 90 degree water. . .the same temperature as the air. The water is very clean, and the Aegean here is bright blue. The beaches are lined with fantastic round pebbles in reds, greens, greys, ivory, white, and agate. I’ve picked up a few handfuls for my now extensive collection of rocks from North Africa, Central Oregon, Puget Sound, Canada, Montana, Idaho, California, the Oregon coast, Turkey, Cape Cod, and the San Juan Islands.

The Central courtyard at the palace at Kato Zakris - click to enlarge

I’ve noticed on this trip that I have not experienced ruin- or museum-fatigue. In fact, on the odd days when we haven’t visited an ancient site, I actually miss them. I keep trying to get Column to write a counterpoint on the ruins. At times he’s clearly felt like “we’re travelling two hours to look at another rubble heap of columns, bricks, stones, and broken statuary?!”

If we didn't have enough museums and ruins for the day, we stopped at an old Greek Orthodox Monastery on the way home for half an hour and inspected many Ikon paintings and old engravings and manuscripts. It was interesting to see how deteriorated the paintings had become since they were painted five centuries ago...when you remember that we have been looking at incredibly intact frescoes and cave paintings on this trip up to 3,500 years older (see, for example the earlier post on the caves and churches of Cappodocia).

Perhaps the most interesting exhibit--for me at least--were the displays of blunderbusses, rifles, pistols and ammunition from wars in the 1800s, World War I and World War II, when the brothers put down their devotions and scholarly pursuits to take up arms and defend Greece, their Monastery and Church against various maurading hordes. . .up to and including the Nazis (who, as you may know, savaged Crete during World War II).

Finally, in the bay at Zakris, sits a listing, rusting freighter thay may or may not be abandoned. I wrote a poem about the freighter, which I will post next.

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The Incredible Minoan Ruins at Knossos, Crete

4/5 of the family at Knossos. The other 20% were taking the photo. Click to enlarge.

We visited the impressive Knossos ruins, just outside Heraklion, Crete, about half an hour after landing on our turbo prop flight from Rhodes. This is my second visit here, and it’s still as impressive as I found in 1982.

The famous dolphin Fresco at Knossos. Circa about the 15th Century B.C. - click to enlarge

Although the controversial archaeologist Arthur Evans took some liberties in his reconstruction (but not his excavations), in some ways these are the most impressive ruins of all, and give you a better picture of what once existed there. Some other archeologists strongly disagree with his theories on Minoan culture and life at the palace. And, in particular, people object to his use of reinforced concrete (and other “non-native”) materials to bridge the gaps (of missing timbers, slabs, or tiles) and actually recreate entire rooms and series of rooms and chambers. They also object to his use of copies of frescoes, thrones, and friezes (that he took away and placed in places like the Heraklion Archaeological museum). On the other hand, unlike other British raiders, he left the booty right here in Greece, instead of hauling it back to the British Museum.

Jack's drawing of the famous Minotaur at Knossos - click to enlarge

Seeing even copies of the 4,000 year old frescoes in place is incredible, and puts the palace in great context, unlike the extensive ruins at, say Afrodesia or Ephesus. If you want to see the originals, you visit the Heraklion Museum…just like you don’t see Michaelangelo’s David outdoors, but a copy. It’s not that radical a concept…if you visit ruins and museums a lot, you well know that most Roman and Greek statuary is hidden away in museums, not exposed at their native site.

part of the reconctructed ruins at Knossos - click to enlarge

People do respect much of Evans’ theory and work, but a small group violently object. . .and it’s not hard to see their point either. Evans was brilliant, so sure I don’t begrudge him a few crackpot theories or taking certain liberties. In my booklet, it was all worth it.

another famous fresco at Knossos (or, rather, a copy--the originals are in the stellar museum at Heraklion). Click to enlarge.

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Turkey in Ruins

By Keelin Curran
All This Is That History and Archeology Editor






Turkey is in ruins, and fully alive at the same time. I love ruins, and did not fully realize when we selected this destination for our trip exactly how much in heaven I would be here tramping around the churches, columns and caves.


A salvaged frieze from the Temple of Afrodesias


Aphrodite (aka Venus) herself, from the Afrodesia Musem of statuary, friezes, etc. Click to enlarge.

In college, one of my sidelines was Greek archeology. I even took a few semesters of Ancient Greek. On one of our earlier trips to Greece, I tracked down a just-discovered (1979) Minoan temple site destroyed by an earthquake in 18th century BC—Anemospilia—see http://www.uk.digiserve.com/mentor/minoan/anemospilia.htm based on the xeroxed information my professor at Hunter College (whose name I don’t recall, but who was an acolyte of renowned Greek archeologist Emily Vermeule) had handed out to the class.


The gate to the Temple of Aphrodite. Click to enlarge.


A close-up of the gates. Click to enlarge.

I travelled by bus, and tramped around the hills near Iraklion to find it. It was not much—just three rooms you could imagine based on the stone foundations, but they had done sacrifices there that brought the place to life—and death--as this passage describes:


Del Brummet ponders a statue of a philosopher in the excellent Afrodesias Museum. Click to enlarge.

“The west room is, in many ways, the most interesting. . . . [t]his room was used for blood sacrifices. Uniquely in Crete, three skeletons were found in the room. Two of these people, a man and a woman, had been killed by the earthquake and resulting fire. Another male skeleton was also found in the room. This body was found lying on an altar. A knife was resting on the skeleton. The feet had been tied and it has been argued that the young man had been sacrificed and the blood drained from his body. If so, it might well have been his blood in the vessel found in the antechamber next to the skeleton. It is most likely that the normal victims of sacrifice would have been bulls, but in the face of seismic activity which threatened the whole community, it may have been considered necessary to make a human sacrifice.”


Colum Brummet emerges from the gladiator's tunnel at the vast 30,000 seat stadium at Afrodessia. Click to enlarge.

This is about as dramatic as it gets in the ruins world, but well illustrates the open-ended speculation (along with tolerance for sifting and digging) required to do this work.


The 30,000 seat stadium & gladaiatorial venue at Afrodesia.

Anyway, since that 1982 trip to Anemospilia, I haven’t been able to indulge my ruins interest until the last few weeks. The family has been most accommodating in patiently going along on trips to see Agia Sofia in Istanbul, (not a ruin, an amazing, living space from 6th C BC but still a lasagna of one culture on top of another, as ruins often are), the cave dwellings and churches of Goreme, and more recently, the ruins riot that is Ephesus, and most dreamily, the ruins of Afrodisias.

I barely know where to start in talking about these experiences. Goreme and Cappadocia were the most mysterious and humbling. These cave refuges of troglodytes and early Christians were often built at great heights above the current ground level—or far below ground. How did they get up there? How did they tolerate long seasons underground? You have a sense about how scared these people must have been, much of the time, threatened by Hittites and Romans et al. The spaces are so small. They would have known everything about each other—a contrast from our life of screens and large dwellings. And the simple, repetitive and sometimes beautiful scenes of the life of Christ in these churches give one the sense of how much reinforcement is necessary to start a religion from the ground up.


Jack in the Bouletarian theatre that served as the ruling council's meeting place as well as a theatre and performance space.

Then, Ephesus and Afrodisias. These two cities give a living sense of Roman life, in its beauty and brutality. The museum near Ephesus had a riveting exhibit on gladiator culture in ancient Rome, complete with an analysis of the wounds suffered by gladiators based on the skeletal evidence. This culture existed among the beautiful marble buildings and statues; blood and circuses and Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe. Yet you can not help but compare the artistry born of imperial ego, politics, wealth and will in these urban spaces with those we inhabit and find our world poverty-stricken in comparison.

At Afrodisias, up until the last few decades, the town of Gehre was built right on top of Afrodisias. Townspeople built there modest houses braced by the bottoms of roman columns, and crushed their grapes in roman baths. The Temple of Aphrodite, unreconstructed, was a field for their livestock. Seeing the pictures of Gehre (since moved a few kilometers, sadly, to allow the excavation) gives one the sense of how we are just the latest layer in this earth lasagna.

Okay, I will stop. Thanks to you All This Is That readers for indulging me in this Turkey travelogue. We have more ruins to go, so life is very, very good for that reason and all the others that make travel so great.
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Ephesus: my favorite ruins of all time

The Theatre at Ephesus - clıck to enlarge

İ'll write about this more, when I get 'net access and some free time again,m but Ephesus ıs by far the most impressive ruins I have ever seen ın Europe or Asıa. Here ıs one quick photograph of the theatre. It held 25,000 people. It stıll does. We were hoping to be able to catch a performance there (can you ımagine how cool ıt would be to see a play a play by Sophocles Aeschylus there?).

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