Two cities cannot be twinned within the same country, but the Loire Valley town of Amboise and Cahors in southwestern France have become joined at the hip thanks to their shared adventures with a historic grape variety known as Malbec in Cahors and Côt in the Tours region. Cahors has…
Viewers put on a headset and get intimate with Lisa The Mona Lisa is conspicuously absent from the Louvre's retrospective of Leonardo da Vinci, but the world-famous Florentine makes up for it by holding court in a virtual reality experience. Organizers of the blockbuster show featuring 10 of the Renaissance…
The Louvre museum has kicked off its blockbuster retrospective of Leonardo da Vinci to mark 500 years since the death of the Renaissance master. Some 240,000 people have already reserved their place in line for the four-month exhibition, the biggest ever organized to showcase the Tuscan polymath's indelible contributions to…
Leonardo's "presumed" remains lie under a tombstone in the small Flamboyant Gothic chapel of Saint Hubert on the grounds of the royal chateau in Amboise on the banks of the Loire. The tale of how the bones were lost and possibly found winds through French history from the…
Two Italian doctors have advanced arguments to counter the widely accepted conclusion that Leonardo da Vinci suffered a stroke, paralyzing his right arm, some five years before his death in 1519. Davide Lazzeri, a plastic surgeon at the Villa Salaria Clinic in Rome, and Carlo Rossi, a neurologist at the…
In her 500 years of existence, Mona Lisa has been around, and she has taken some knocks. Since 1516 when she traversed the Alps in a mule caravan with her creator as he travelled to France, she has been twice stolen and twice vandalized, and her enigmatic face has been…
The Louvre has kicked off reservations for a blockbuster exhibition in October of most of Leonardo da Vinci's paintings to mark the quincentennial of the Renaissance master's death. Tickets to the show opening on October 24 will not be available at the box office, but only on the website www.ticketlouvre.fr…
Leonardo died 500 years ago on May 2 in the Loire Valley town of Amboise, where he was the prestigious guest of French King Francis I for the last three years of his life. The Florentine master brought with him three of his favorite paintings: the Mona Lisa, the Virgin…
Nearly 200 Yellow Vests on Saturday staged a protest in Amboise, where French President Emmanuel Macron is due on Thursday, May 2, along with his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci with the town under virtual lockdown. Activists from…
The French are serious about their wine, and none more so than the stalwarts of the Confrérie des Entonneurs Rabelaisiens--loosely translated, a brotherhood of winemakers who channel the great humanist and storyteller Rabelais. The people of the Loire Valley city of Chinon refer to the 16th-century satirist who gave us…