Historic sites from Britain to Spain where the past is always present
History is tangible at these storied European sites.
One of the strangest historical shocks I have had in my travelling life was many years ago, waking up one morning in a B&B called Ballachulish House near Glencoe, Scotland. Only when I idly read some information about the place at breakfast did I realise this was the house where the order had been signed for the infamous massacre of the MacDonalds in 1692. It was a moment of mixed emotion because my late grandfather was a MacDonald and had told me the story, so I wasn’t sure what he would have thought of my choice of accommodation. But the experience was a profound one.
Today, the instinct to use travel as a way of reconnecting with the past feels even stronger and more relevant. And, as I found in Ballachulish, you don’t have to do that only by visiting museums or touring Europe’s historic sites. If you find the right places to stay and the right journeys to make, you can feel, in some small way, part of the places you are visiting and the memories they hold.
Of course, there are myriad eras and destinations to explore. The following suggestions, including the Glencoe accommodation, are particularly engaging. They cover a broad sweep of history, from the ruins of ancient Greece to a Venetian palazzo.
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TEMPLE VIEWS
Some of the best and most atmospheric ruins that survive from the ancient Greeks are not in Greece, but in Sicily. And some of the most important are at Agrigento, once one of the richest and most famous of its colonies. Among the ruins on a beautiful site overlooking the south coast are those of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which is the largest Doric temple constructed. Stay just next to it in Villa Athena, the only five-star hotel on site, and soak up the atmosphere.
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THE ROAD FROM ROME
The Via Appia Antica (Appian Way) is an ancient road constructed in 312BC to connect Rome with Brindisi in southeast Italy. It still exists — in places as a road, in others a paved path — and is lined by vestiges of its once great past. On Sunday mornings, when the first section leading out of the city is closed to traffic, it makes an excellent walk. The first few kilometres are part of a natural and archeological park, the Parco Regionale dell’Appia Antica, and among the notable ruins en route are the Porta Appia, the gate of the Aurelian Walls, three major Roman tombs, the Circus and Mausoleum of Maxentius and the Capo di Bove baths.
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IN HANNIBAL’S FOOTSTEPS
Hannibal, the extraordinary general from Carthage (modern-day Tunis), marched from Spain to Italy with 50,000 men and about 40 elephants in 218BC. His mission was to exact revenge for Carthage’s humiliating defeat by Rome a generation earlier. His transcontinental march was one of military history’s most brilliant surprise strategies and he spent the next 15 years ravaging Italy. His exact route across the Alps is unknown, but you can follow it in spirit by bike on an escorted two-week Ride and Seek tour from Barcelona to Alba in Italy. You’ll need to be fit; it includes some testing Alpine climbs.
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EARLY ENGLAND
Few landscapes are quite so redolent of early English history as the island of Lindisfarne (Holy Island), connected to the Northumberland coastline by a tidal causeway. It was the home of Celtic monastic Christianity in the sixth century and during the medieval period. The key sights are the ruins of the priory and the 16th-century castle, but the magic of the place is to stay there overnight and soak up the atmosphere after the day-trippers have gone home. Stay in the National Trust’s St Oswald’s Cottage designed by turn-of-the-last-century architect Edwin Lutyens.
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PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS
Arguably, it was the Romans who invented villa vacations, and medieval pilgrims who invented walking holidays. In fact, pilgrims have been walking to the shrine of St James in Santiago de Compostela for 1000 years, but in the past decade or so it has also become popular with contemporary tourists drawn by the beautiful landscapes of northern Spain and by a sense of history. Many tour operators offer a variety of options and lengths, from guided group walks to independent itineraries.
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ABBEY LIFE
England’s most atmospheric ruins are those of the great medieval monasteries laid waste by Henry VIII in the 1530s and 1540s — one of the most profound moments of cultural loss in terms of art, architecture and libraries, in history. But even among the ruins, you can still get a strong sense of the extraordinary history and grandeur, especially at Rievaulx in North Yorkshire, once one of Europe’s most important Cistercian abbeys. Stay at the Refectory cottage (sleeps four), with its idyllic location in the grounds of the abbey.
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FORTIFIED HOLIDAY
Dover Castle, with its ditches and its ramparts commanding the English Channel, has been one of the country’s key defensive points for centuries. The current defensive structures were begun in the 1180s when Henry II built the keep. During the next 800 years, it was expanded and adapted as the technology of war developed. You can experience it all from the inside by booking the small apartment for two rented out by English Heritage. It is part of the 13th-century Peverell’s Tower, which has a private roof terrace with panoramic views over the castle and sea.
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FORGOTTEN KINGS
Olite, in northern Spain, is a half-forgotten historical town, once the seat of a half-forgotten dynasty, the Kings of Navarre. Their realm, on land either side of the western Pyrenees, was constantly caught between the competing interests of Spain and France, which eventually shared the spoils. But vestiges survive. The castle at Olite was aggrandised with stained-glass windows and gothic arcades and used as a royal palace from about 1400 until its conquest by Castile in 1512. It is now a parador where you can rediscover a sense of this lost kingdom.
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INSIDE THE ALHAMBRA
You get a double historical hit at Granada’s Alhambra Palace, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It is a reminder of the Moorish occupation of southern Spain, built in the mid-13th century and then converted into a royal palace in 1333 by the Sultan of Granada with the fabulous terraced gardens and courtyards that define it today. After regaining control of the south in 1492, the Spanish royal family aggrandised it even further, so it reflects a high point of both Muslim and Christian culture. Stay in Parador de Granada, part of the main complex in a former 15th-century monastery.
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JACOBEAN FANTASY
Anne Boleyn was born at Blickling in Norfolk in about 1501 in an old manor house that was rebuilt in 1616 to be one of England’s greatest Jacobean houses. From the outside it is a stunning example of ornate brick and stonework and the interior showpiece is the long gallery library with its ornate plaster ceiling. It runs for most of the length of the east side of the house, overlooking the gardens. For the best experience of Blickling Hall and its estate, stay in the 18th-century tower. Originally built as a race stand, it has fabulous views over the estate park.
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DARK PAST
It was at Ballachulish House in February 1692 that Major Robert Duncanson wrote a letter to Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon ordering him to “fall upon the rebels the MacDonalds of Glencoe, and put all to the sword under seventy”. That was the notorious Glencoe massacre when 30 members of the Clan MacDonald were killed by government soldiers billeted with them because they had been slow to pledge allegiance to the newly enthroned King William and Queen Mary. The house was partly rebuilt in the 18th century, but the scenery, in one of the most beautiful parts of Scotland, has changed little.
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CASANOVA’S VENICE
One of the great lost experiences of Venice is the grand arrival. In a city that was built to display the immense wealth of its inhabitants, virtually all of the palazzi and elite buildings were designed with their formal entrance, the porta d’acqua, opening directly on to the water. The only Venice hotel where this entrance still has an authentic feel is the Aman. It is housed in a 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal, but the interior decorations date from the 18th century and the time of Casanova, when Venice had become a party town rather than a trading superpower.
■ aman.com
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REVOLUTION CENTRAL
The Hotel de Crillon — one of the best in Paris, and the former residence of the Comte de Crillon — has at least two major historical claims to fame. First, it looks directly out over the Place de la Concorde, which was where the young Marie Antoinette celebrated her wedding to Louis XVI in 1770, but also where they were guillotined in 1793. Second, it was where, in 1778, France and the US, represented by Benjamin Franklin, signed their first treaty, which recognised the Declaration of Independence.
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FRANCE IN EXILE
Hartwell House, a lovely 17th to 18th-century country house in the Buckinghamshire countryside, once hosted a forgotten chapter in Anglo-French relations. It was the home in exile of the court during the Napoleonic era. Louis XVIII resided here with his family and entourage from 1809 to 1814. During the residence, the French, desperately short of resources, converted the roof into a miniature farm with birds and rabbits reared in cages, and grew vegetables and herbs in tubs. It’s now a hotel.
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HEAT OF BATTLE
When Tolstoy was writing War and Peace, he stayed at a monastery at Borodino, the battlefield where Napoleon’s luck in Russia first began to turn. You can do the same at Waterloo, in Belgium, by staying at the Landmark Trust’s Hougoumont apartment. Just before the battle, the Duke of Wellington declared the outcome “depended upon the closing of the gates at Hougoumont” and the chateau there was the key defensive position for the Allied line. The chateau burned down during the fighting, but the enclosure held firm. The first-floor apartment is in the former gardener’s cottage and is furnished to evoke the Napoleonic era.
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PICTURE PERFECT
John Constable’s The Hay Wain is one of the most famous paintings of the English countryside, and the view across a ford on the River Stour on the Suffolk-Essex border is little changed. Even more remarkable is the fact you can stay in the little white house shown on the left of the painting. Known then and now as Willy Lott’s Cottage, it is a magical place by the river, a few paces from Flatford Mill, which was owned by Constable’s father.
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ROYAL RETREAT
Osborne House, on the north coast of the Isle of Wight, was Queen Victoria’s favourite escape from public life, both before and after the death of Prince Albert. It is also where she died in 1901. You could say it is the secret heart of Victorian England and the private apartments still reflect the ornate tastes and style of the royal couple. The gardens, with commanding views over the Solent, are wonderful too, and you can experience them from the inside by booking English Heritage’s Pavilion Cottage, which is in the grounds and sleeps four.
■ english-heritage.org.uk
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