Eating out up until the time when I was first married (1965) was a rare event reserved only for special occasions like a wedding. It goes without saying that I was completely overwhelmed when my boyfriend took me to the Back of the Moon Room at the Oceanic Hotel at Coogee Beach and became my fiancee. Served with roast vegetables the meal was washed down by a glass of Lindemans Sparkling Porphry Pearl, which was the ultimate in cool in 1964.

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18th century Scottish architect Robert Adam was ambitious and planned to perfect his knowledge of architecture on his Grand Tour by examining outstanding monuments from antiquity. He also wanted to refine his social graces so that he would be able to move in the highest possible elevations of society, conversing easily with any member of the aristocracy that had formed and refined their taste in Italy.

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Professor David O’Connor and Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill have spent a great deal of time excavating and conserving the sites of Abydos in Egypt and Herculaneum in Italy respectively. Both continue to yield spectacular discoveries invaluable to classical historians and the world at large.

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This spring Brisbane artist David Henderson will hold his 2011 Exhibition in the Graydon Gallery at New Farm in Brisbane. What David offers in the 30+ works on offer is a glimpse of pure joy. They are evocative atmospheric scenes, mostly from the ancient Italian city La Serenissima (The Most Serene Republic) Venice, where with his brush and colour on canvas he constantly explores the elusive qualities of light, seeking to access its ever-deepening mysteries.

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When in 1563 Humanist Poet Annibal Caro retired into private life, to alternate between Rome and the countryside, he said ‘I seem to have found the alchemy of staying well’

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If you bring both gold and precious or semi precious stones together skilfully a add a dash of passion, smidgen of sentiment, make them expressive of romance as well as symbolic of true love then you have a ‘tour de force’, a triumph of Cupid’s D’art Love Jewellery, Rome to Renaissance

An important aspect of every human society yet recorded is a belief that gold and gemstones had an enormous effect on the affairs of many. This has not been limited to any age or culture some of the first tokens of human affection were worn as treasured souvenirs.

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The precise location of heaven on earth has never really been established. However it could be at the Villa Rigoni Savioli at Padua, nearby to Venice in Northern Italy. The architecture is in the Palladian style, which is based on the work of sixteenth century master architect, Andrea Palladio (1508-1580). He went on a passionate pursuit to build the perfect house and the readily adaptable architectural formula he developed was so successful he gained followers and imitators in his own day, as well as over the four centuries since.

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It seemed poetic on Saturday that, as I was working on the production of the Roman epoch and destruction of Vesuvius in 79AD by the forces of nature, when wild storms unleashed their full fury on Melbourne.

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