Articles on European travel
Useful resources for the European traveller
- Free self-guided tours - our downloadable PDFs of European cities
- Undiscovered Germany - Hildesheim
- Undiscovered Germany - Lubeck
- Podtours recommends - Books on English towns and landscape
- Stressed out in Rome? Chill out in a cloister.
- Romanesque churches of Castile - a little known aspect of Spain.
- An hour to spare in London - interesting sights close to the train stations.
- Escape from Paris! Interesting places just a few metro stops away from the centre.
- Eating well for less - finding good, cheap restaurants in European tourist destinations.
- Gruesome Europe. Ten of the best destinations for the Goth in you, and then some more.
- Italy's best small towns - a personal selection. See small town Italy - a refreshing change from the big city.
- The top ten cathedrals in France - a personal selection (with a couple of surprises).
- Castles of Europe - a historical trip through great castles in England, France, Germany, Italy - and Poland.
What you're looking at - architecture style guides
What you're looking at - the
Romanesque
What you're looking at - the Gothic style
What you're looking at - the Renaissance
What you're looking at - Modern architecture
Mudejar architecture - the Arab heritage in Spain
Art history guides
The labours of the months - a medieval theme and its meanings. This article is profusely illustrated and has a list of links as well as a gazetteer of sites where you can see the labours of the months in sculpture and stained glass.
Marginalia - a guide to the 'subversive zone' of medieval art, the borders of manuscripts and the choir stalls and misericords of Gothic churches
Videos
How to read a Gothic cathedral façade - a guide to the way Gothic masons and sculptors created messages about their world using the structure of the cathedral façade.
The rose window - we look at rose windows through the ages, from the Romanesque to the Renaissance, and see how it developed ferom a simple circular opening to a sophisticated geometry of tracery.
Guides to the cathedrals
The cathedrals of Spain - GE Street's Victorian guide to the cathedrals is still a useful work, explaining the development of the Spanish Gothic and Romanesque styles. We have guides to Toledo, Santiago, Leon, Burgos, Salamanca, Segovia, Lugo, Avila and Zamora, plus three great churches - San Isidoro, Leon; San Vicente, Avila; and San Millan, Segovia.
We have also annotated excerpts from the excellent Bell's Cathedrals, a series of guides to the cathedrals and greater churches of England. These include York, Norwich, Southwark, Winchester, Durham, Chichester, Ely, Salisbury, Hereford, St Albans, and Carlisle; and St Bartholomews, Smithfield, London.
T Francis Bumpus wrote a number of guides to Continental Cathedrals; we have reproduced excerpts from his Cathedrals of Southern France , including Poitiers, Toulouse, Albi, Carcassonne, Arles, Le Puy, and Autun. If you're taking a holiday in Burgundy, his notes on Burgundian architecture are also worth reading.