Letters from a slower kind of travel.https://historyappreciationtours.com/https://historyappreciationtours.com/letters/the-most-beautiful-statue-in-the-world/https://historyappreciationtours.com/letters/the-most-beautiful-statue-in-the-world/For two centuries the Venus de' Medici was the thing you crossed Europe to see. Today most people walk past it on the way to the Botticellis. Either our ancestors were wrong, or we are, and both possibilities are more interesting than they sound.Wed, 21 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTLetters from the Tourhttps://historyappreciationtours.com/letters/carried-over-the-alps/https://historyappreciationtours.com/letters/carried-over-the-alps/Grand Tourists crossed the Alps at Mont Cenis in a chair carried by strangers, with their carriage in pieces on the backs of mules, and most of them thought the scenery was hideous. Fifty years later the same view was the most sublime thing on earth. What changed?Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTLetters from the Tourhttps://historyappreciationtours.com/post/plinys-letter/https://historyappreciationtours.com/post/plinys-letter/A historian asked a seventeen-year-old's grown-up self how his uncle died. The answer, two letters about the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, is the first eyewitness account of a volcanic eruption we have. And it might have the date wrong.Mon, 19 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Posthttps://historyappreciationtours.com/philosophy/the-chess-machine-with-a-man-inside/https://historyappreciationtours.com/philosophy/the-chess-machine-with-a-man-inside/For eighty-four years a mechanical Turk in a turban beat the best players in Europe and America, and supposedly Napoleon too. Clever people spent all that time arguing about how the machine worked. The right answer was the boring one, and it's worth asking why it was so hard to say out loud.Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTNatural Philosophyhttps://historyappreciationtours.com/cabinet/the-clock-with-two-minute-hands/https://historyappreciationtours.com/cabinet/the-clock-with-two-minute-hands/On the front of the Corn Exchange in Bristol there's a clock with an extra minute hand, set about ten minutes apart from the other. It's a fossil from the time before time was standardised, when every town ran on its own clock and that was completely sensible.Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Cabinethttps://historyappreciationtours.com/letters/under-the-porta-del-popolo/https://historyappreciationtours.com/letters/under-the-porta-del-popolo/Every traveller from the north came into Rome through the same gate. Goethe came through it on an October evening in 1786, under a false name, and finally let himself believe he'd made it.Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTLetters from the Tourhttps://historyappreciationtours.com/cabinet/the-claude-glass/https://historyappreciationtours.com/cabinet/the-claude-glass/Eighteenth-century tourists walked to the best viewpoint in the Lake District, turned round, and looked at it in a small dark mirror. Meet the Claude glass, the phone screen of the 1770s.Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Cabinethttps://historyappreciationtours.com/post/before-envelopes/https://historyappreciationtours.com/post/before-envelopes/The letter was its own envelope. People folded it into locks, sealed it with wax or with a dab of flour paste, crammed every inch with writing, and drew in the margins. And the person receiving it was the one who paid.Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Posthttps://historyappreciationtours.com/philosophy/the-ambassador-and-the-volcano/https://historyappreciationtours.com/philosophy/the-ambassador-and-the-volcano/Britain's envoy to Naples was meant to be doing diplomacy. Instead Sir William Hamilton climbed Vesuvius dozens of times, wrote it all up for the Royal Society, and hired a painter to record what he saw. The result is one of the most beautiful science books ever printed.Sun, 04 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTNatural Philosophyhttps://historyappreciationtours.com/meanwhile/meanwhile-1786/https://historyappreciationtours.com/meanwhile/meanwhile-1786/The autumn Goethe slipped into Rome under a false name, a woman in Slough found a comet, two men from Chamonix stood on top of Mont Blanc, and Mozart's Figaro opened in Vienna. One year, gone round the whole world.Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTMeanwhile