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Japanese folding screens from the Edo period upon which other foldings screens are painted, bedecked with magnificent garments.

Hearst Castle’s Roman Pool, a sumptuous creation by Julia Morgan, serves as a metaphor for the spirit of California.

The Codex Cospi, now at the University of Bologna, is one of only a very few pre-Columbian manuscripts still extant.

Mr. PA, contemplating Goya’s portrait of Manuel Osorio at the Metropolitan Museum, meditates on the nature of art and his own life.

The ceiling of the Sala dei Baroni in the Palazzo Chiaromonte “Steri” in Palermo, with its repertoire of stories, is a masterpiece of figurative medieval art.

The Casa Madre dell’Associazione Nazionale fra Invalidi e Mutilati di Guerra, designed by Piacentini, houses works by Wildt and Sironi, among others.

Glassblowing and photography bring within our eyeshot the marvels that Nature has concealed in the depths.

A bust in polychrome marble at Santa Maria Maggiore (Rome) depicts the Congolese ambassador to the Holy See from the turn of the 1600s, António Manuel Ne Vunda.

Personal thoughts and profound memories reawakened by an object as simple and unassuming as a coin bank.

The life and work of the Polish-Jewish painter Morris Hirshfield, who worked in the United States from 1937 in 1946.

A touching article by Giovanni Mariotti, written in a single burst without punctuation, offering us a portrait of the Macchiaiolo painter Silvestro Lega.

The peculiar eclecticism of some eccentric villas in the Salento region of Puglia, which look like fantastical palaces belonging to an imaginary Orient.

The adventures (especially the romantic escapades) of Byron in Ravenna, illustrated with paintings inspired by the poet’s creations in those same years.

The Arch of Trajan in Benevento speaks of his unrequited dream of spreading the Roman way into the distant and mythical lands of India.

The elaborate forms of bread baked in Sardinia for the celebration of Easter and weddings offer an occasion to reflect on our daily food by definition.

A procession of the quick and the dead, guided by skeletons, in the churches of
Beram (Croatia) and Hrastovlje (Slovenia).

The most intellectual of all parlor pastimes, the game of chess is described through the chessboards of a Portuguese collection.

The ivory panels of Salerno, a masterpiece of medieval fine carving, with depictions from the Testaments, Old and New.

The Museum of Innocence in Istanbul is closely bound up with the Nobel Laureate’s novel of the same name; Pamuk here tells about their genesis.

The botanical festoons frescoed by Giovanni da Udine in Rome’s Villa Farnesina, which include species then newly brought over from the New World.

Magnificent tables of marble and inlaid stones made in Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century.