Darwin’s Cathedral: Seeing Religion Through an Evolutionary Lens

Image created with AI.

When we travel across Europe, it is almost impossible not to notice the presence of religion. Cathedrals shape skylines. Small shrines mark old roads. Processions still move through villages where people know each other. Whether in a Portuguese hamlet, a Spanish mountain town, or a Flemish square, religion has long shaped landscapes and identities.

But what if we look at religion not only as belief, but also as a way in which human communities learned to live together?

This is the central idea of Darwin’s Cathedral by evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson. The book invites us to see religion through the same lens we use to understand cooperation and social life. Not to dismiss it or defend it, but to ask why it has appeared in so many cultures and why it has lasted so long.

Religion and Cooperation

Humans survive by cooperating. We are not the strongest animals, but we are exceptionally good at forming groups. From early hunting bands to modern societies, working together has been our greatest strength.

Yet cooperation is fragile. Every community must deal with selfish behaviour. How do you build trust? How do you encourage people to contribute when no one is watching?

Wilson suggests that many religious traditions grew in part because they helped communities answer these questions. They created shared moral expectations, common stories, and a sense of belonging. They encouraged generosity and discouraged behaviour that harmed the group. People felt accountable not only to each other, but also to something greater than themselves.

Over generations, communities that were able to strengthen trust and solidarity were often more stable. Those that failed to do so tended to fragment or disappear. In this way, religious traditions were shaped by the practical challenges of everyday life.

The Power of Ritual

The book also highlights the importance of ritual. From chanting to pilgrimages, rituals may appear mysterious, but they create strong emotional bonds. Anyone who has witnessed a local feast or procession in southern Europe recognises their effect. They bring people together, reinforce memory, and strengthen identity.

Even today, societies that see themselves as secular use similar practices—national ceremonies, commemorations, and shared public events. These moments remind people that they belong to a larger story.

Belief and Behaviour

One of the most striking ideas in the book is that behaviour often matters more than doctrine. In practice, what counts is whether people act in ways that support cooperation and stability.

This helps explain why many religious traditions emphasise visible commitment. Charity, prayer, fasting, and other demanding practices signal loyalty. They show that someone is willing to invest time and effort in the community, which makes trust easier.

Religious communities have also often built strong networks of support. Many hospitals, schools, and welfare systems have roots in these traditions.

A Cultural Traveller’s Perspective

For travellers, this perspective opens a new way of seeing. A cathedral is not only an architectural masterpiece; it is the result of centuries of shared effort. A pilgrimage route is also a network that connected communities, trade, and culture.

Standing in Vézelay, Santiago de Compostela, or a small Romanesque church in rural France, you are looking at the long history of how people learned to organise their lives together. These places show how trust, identity, and cooperation were built across generations.

This approach encourages curiosity rather than judgement. Religion becomes part of an evolving cultural landscape that continues to shape Europe today.

Further Reading

• David Sloan Wilson — Darwin’s Cathedral

• Joseph Henrich — The WEIRDest People in the World

• Pascal Boyer — Religion Explained

• Scott Atran — In Gods We Trust

Columbus Before the Crossing

Preparation, Power, and the Ships at Muelle de las Carabelas

The replica’s of the “La Pinta”, the “Santa Maria”, and the “La Niña” at Muelle de las Carabelas; the three ships with which Columbus departed to the New World.

The story of Christopher Columbus does not begin with the open Atlantic, but with months of waiting, negotiation, and preparation along the rivers and monasteries of southern Spain. The Muelle de las Carabelas marks the physical end point of that long prelude: the place where plans, promises, and royal backing finally took shape as ships and crews.

Royal backing at last

Before arriving in Palos, Columbus had spent years trying to convince Europe’s rulers of his westward route to Asia. He was repeatedly rejected, until the decisive intervention of the Reyes Católicos—Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. Fresh from the conquest of Granada in early 1492, the Catholic Monarchs were consolidating power, expanding influence, and looking outward. Columbus’s proposal aligned with their ambitions: trade routes beyond Portuguese control, prestige, and the spread of Christianity.

The agreement reached in the Capitulations of Santa Fe granted Columbus titles, status, and a share of future profits. What remained was turning paper promises into seaworthy reality.

Waiting and preparing in Palos

Columbus arrived in Palos de la Frontera in the spring of 1492 and remained there for several months. This was not idle time. Ships had to be found, repaired, and outfitted; provisions loaded; crews recruited—often reluctantly. Royal orders compelled the town to provide vessels, a sign that local enthusiasm was limited. Experienced sailors such as the Pinzón brothers proved crucial in making the expedition viable, lending both nautical expertise and local credibility.

This period of preparation is essential to understanding the voyage. Columbus was not simply a visionary setting sail; he was a man dependent on networks of power, coercion, negotiation, and practical maritime knowledge. The river port of Palos, modest and workmanlike, became a temporary hub of imperial ambition.

The ships as historical evidence

Walking among the replicas at the Muelle de las Carabelas makes this preparatory phase tangible. The Santa María, larger and heavier, reflects royal expectations of command and control. The Niña and Pinta, agile caravels familiar to Atlantic sailors, reveal the practical compromises behind the expedition. These were not ideal vessels for a grand vision of Asia, but the best available tools for an uncertain gamble.

Their cramped interiors and exposed decks underline another truth: months of planning could not eliminate risk. Once these ships left the river mouth, royal authority, contracts, and titles meant little against wind, currents, and human endurance.

"The First Voyage", chromolithograph by L. Prang & Co., published by The Prang Educational Co., Boston, 1893.
An imaginary scene of Christopher Columbus bidding farewell to the Queen of Spain on his departure for the New World, August 3, 1492.

From local river to global rupture

The Muelle de las Carabelas therefore represents more than a departure point. It is the place where royal policy, local obligation, and individual ambition converged. From here, in August 1492, three small ships carried not only Columbus westward, but Europe into a new Atlantic era—one marked by exchange, conquest, and profound violence.

Seen in this light, the ships are not merely symbols of discovery. They are the final material expression of months spent waiting, persuading, preparing, and assembling power on shore. Standing beside them today, it becomes clear that the so-called “voyage of discovery” was already deeply shaped by politics, monarchy, and negotiation long before the sails ever caught the wind.

See also: Columbus and the Catholic Monarchs: A Meeting That Changed History

The Front Is Closer Than We Think

Four Years of Russia’s War Against Ukraine

The Human Face of Europe’s Front.

At the Remember Together event in Maastricht (February 24, 2026), held to mark four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I met five Ukrainian soldiers who have been fighting at the front. Speaking with them was not dramatic in the way one might expect. It was something else entirely: quiet, sober, and deeply humbling.

One of them, a young woman who spoke Dutch, shared her story. She was born in Ukraine but grew up in the Netherlands. She studied here, built a life here, and speaks with the calm clarity of someone shaped by both worlds. Yet when Russia invaded, she told me, something fundamental shifted. Her sense of justice was so deeply violated that she felt she had no choice. She started to work for the foundation ‘Eyes on Ukraine’ and supports the Ukranian soldiers.

She explained her decision without anger, without theatrical heroism. If you are attacked in your fundamental freedom, you do not really have a choice. You must defend yourself. It was not ideology. It was logic. Almost matter-of-fact.

What struck me most in my conversations with her and the others was their balance. These are people who have lived through trench warfare, who have lost friends, who have seen things most Europeans only know from history books. And yet they spoke with empathy, even about those in Europe who prefer not to see the danger. There was no bitterness. Only concern.

Again and again, they returned to one message: this is not only Ukraine’s front. It is Europe’s front. They worry that many Europeans still believe the war is distant, contained, someone else’s tragedy. They spoke about the fragility of support, about the limits of manpower, about the urgent need for weapons. But also about morale. Soldiers must feel they are not alone.

At the same time, they were clear about something else. You do not want this to happen to you. Their fight is not a call for others to suffer, but a warning. If aggression is not stopped, it spreads.

Standing there in Maastricht, far from the mud and noise of the trenches, I felt a deep sense of humility. These men and women have given so much, and still they speak rationally, with restraint, and with respect for the very societies that hesitate to fully grasp what is at stake. After everything they have endured, they have not lost their humanity.

Perhaps that is their most powerful message. Not only that freedom must be defended, but that even in the darkest circumstances, dignity and empathy can survive. And that, too, is something Europe should not take for granted.

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Щиро дякуємо вам за вашу мужність, силу і людяність. Дякуємо, що ви захищаєте свободу всієї Європи. Ми з вами.

We sincerely thank you for your courage, strength and humanity. Thank you for defending the freedom of all Europe. We stand with you.

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The Remember Together event was organised by Ukrainian House Maastricht, a local organisation supporting the Ukrainian community.

You can support the soldiers at the front via ‘Eyes on Ukraine’ by - Click Here

More on this blog on the topic of the Ukraine - Click Here

St. Dominic at the Convento de San Esteban

St. Dominic, Convento de San Esteban, Salamanca. With cherubs at his side and a church in his hand, the saint recalls the Dominican Order’s role in guiding Columbus and shaping Spain’s Golden Age of faith and discovery.

In Salamanca’s Convento de San Esteban, a radiant statue of St. Dominic commands attention. Clad in the white and black habit of his Order, he lifts one hand in a sweeping gesture while the other holds a model of a church — the house of faith and learning he founded. Two cherubs cling to his cloak, playfully bound by a cord, a tender reminder of the ties between heaven and earth.

This image captures more than devotion: it anchors the story of a convent that shaped history. Within these walls, Dominican friars once guided Christopher Columbus as he sought support for his daring voyage west. San Esteban became a hub of preaching, study, and counsel, its influence stretching far beyond Salamanca.

Seen today, the statue embodies that same spirit. St. Dominic appears alive, luminous, and close at hand — a founder whose mission to spread truth reached all the way to the New World.

Another Street Scene I Couldn’t Catch

The 4 men with the carousel plane (generated with AI).

Anyone who carries a camera for long enough begins to collect an invisible archive.

These are the images that never made it onto a memory card: scenes glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, moments that would have made a perfect photograph—if only you had been a heartbeat quicker. The camera stays in the bag, reality moves on, and the image settles permanently behind your eyes.

Another one joined that archive in Antwerp.

You’re walking down the street, mind elsewhere, when the back doors of a van swing open. Without ceremony, four men step into the street carrying a small airplane—not a real one, but a carousel plane, the kind children once climbed into, now lifted carefully by adult hands. No explanation, no warning. Just a fragment of a fairground drifting briefly through everyday city life.

It was utterly surreal. Beautiful, even. A scene so unexpected that it stopped time for a second.

By the time I reached for my camera, the moment had already dissolved. The van closed, the men moved on, the street returned to normal. Another missed shot.

Later, unwilling to let the image fade, I turned to AI and tried to reconstruct what I had seen—not to replace the photograph I never took, but to give shape to a memory that refused to leave.

A Romanesque Altar Frontal of the León Cathedral: A Window into Pilgrimage and Legend

In the grandeur of León Cathedral, a striking frontal de altar from the 14th century tells a vivid story of faith, legend, and the enduring power of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. This polychrome masterpiece, painted on wood and richly adorned with gold leaf, weaves together key episodes from the legend of Saint James (Santiago), alongside the figure of Saint Christopher, protector of travelers.

The altar frontal is structured in five narrative panels, each depicting a crucial episode of the legendary transfer of Saint James' body to Galicia.

Top Left: Queen Lupa and the Disciples of Santiago
According to legend, after Saint James' martyrdom in Jerusalem, his disciples carried his body to Hispania. Seeking a burial place, they approached Queen Lupa in Flavia (modern-day Padrón). Initially resistant, she subjected them to trials before she ultimately converted to Christianity. The scene captures the moment of their plea before the queen, her regal posture contrasting with their humble gestures.

Lower Left: Saint Christopher and Saint James as the Warrior Pilgrim
A striking image shows a bearded figure wading through water with a child on his shoulder—Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers, who carried Christ across a river. Beside him, a knightly figure on horseback with a flag is likely Saint James in his Matamoros guise, a vision that was said to have inspired Christian forces in battle. This juxtaposition reinforces the protection of travelers and the role of Santiago as a spiritual and military guide.

Top Right: The Oxen and the Coffin
One of the trials Queen Lupa imposed on Saint James’ disciples was to give them a cart with wild, untamed oxen to transport his remains, hoping they would fail. However, through divine intervention, the animals were miraculously tamed, allowing the disciples to complete their mission. This scene captures the sacred nature of their journey, emphasizing the role of faith and divine guidance in overcoming obstacles.

Lower Right: The Boat Carrying Saint James
A small vessel with two figures—one possibly a disciple, the other haloed—holds what is likely the coffin of Saint James. This recalls the legend of his miraculous sea voyage from Jerusalem to Galicia, carried by divine will. The scene is rendered with simple, powerful forms, reinforcing the mystical nature of the tale.

Central Panel: A Pilgrim or a King?
The most enigmatic figure stands beneath an arched structure crowned with castle towers. Could this be a representation of King Alfonso II of Asturias, the first known pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela, paying homage to the saint’s newly discovered tomb? Or is it an anonymous pilgrim, embodying the devotion of countless travelers? The ambiguity invites contemplation, drawing the viewer into the world of medieval belief.

A Testament to Pilgrimage Culture

This altar frontal is not just an artwork; it is a testimony to the deep cultural and religious currents of medieval Spain. The Camino de Santiago was one of Europe’s most significant pilgrimage routes, and artifacts like this offered both instruction and inspiration to the faithful.

Fool’s Paradise

Schopenhauer, Dunning–Kruger, and the Comfort of Being Certain

Hieronymus Bosch, The Extraction of the Stone of Madness (c. 1494–1516, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain).
A fool submits to surgery to remove the “stone” of stupidity, while the surgeon himself wears a funnel — the medieval symbol of folly. Bosch’s satire is razor-sharp: ignorance is not a pebble to be extracted, nor wisdom something that can be poured in. Five centuries later, the scene still reads like a warning against the comfort of a fool’s paradise.

Have you ever argued with someone who was completely wrong — and completely certain?

No hesitation. No nuance. No curiosity. Just calm assurance, as if reality itself had signed off on their conclusion.

A recent YouTube video titled “Why ‘Idiots’ Think They're Intelligent – Schopenhauer” revisits an old and unsettling insight: long before modern psychology described the Dunning–Kruger effect, Arthur Schopenhauer had already identified the mechanism behind confident ignorance.

He called it, in essence, a fool’s paradise.

When Ignorance Feels Like Clarity

Schopenhauer observed something simple and devastating: intelligence perceives complexity; ignorance does not.

If you lack the knowledge to detect nuance, competing interpretations, hidden assumptions, and technical depth, everything appears straightforward. And when the world appears simple, you feel certain.

Doubt only begins when complexity becomes visible.

Anyone who has seriously studied a discipline recognizes the pattern. At first, it looks manageable. Then, as you go deeper, the terrain becomes more intricate. What once felt obvious dissolves into questions. That uncomfortable realization — the sudden awareness of how much you do not know — is the beginning of competence.

But if you never reach that point, you remain in a fool’s paradise: a state of effortless confidence sustained by limited perception.

Familiarity Is Not Understanding

The video draws a crucial distinction between recognition and comprehension.

We live in an age of exposure. We scroll through psychology threads, listen to economics podcasts, quote philosophers on social media, and absorb fragments of neuroscience. We become familiar with terminology. We can follow conversations. We feel informed.

Familiarity is passive. Expertise is active.

Expertise allows you to apply ideas, defend them against strong criticism, explain them clearly, and recognize their limits. Familiarity simply means you have encountered the vocabulary before. The mind easily confuses the two. Once we believe we understand something, curiosity fades. Why investigate further what already feels known?

Modern psychology later formalized this pattern through the work of David Dunning and Justin Kruger. Their research showed that the skills required to perform well in a domain are often the same skills required to evaluate performance accurately. Without those skills, self-assessment becomes unreliable — and confidence inflates.

Schopenhauer had already seen this dynamic in academic life and public debate.

Blindness Disguised as Equality

There is a harsher dimension.

To recognize excellence, you need some baseline competence yourself. Without it, the expert and the amateur appear indistinguishable. A rigorous philosophical system and a casual opinion can look equally valid. A peer-reviewed study and a persuasive blog post may seem interchangeable.

From inside that limitation, the person is not necessarily arrogant. They are blind. And blindness feels like equality.

If you cannot see higher standards, you do not aspire to them. Without aspiration, there is no improvement. Without improvement, the gap remains invisible. The fool’s paradise sustains itself.

Complexity as Camouflage

Not all confident ignorance sounds simple. Sometimes it sounds impressively complex.

Dense language, elaborate frameworks, and abstract terminology can create the illusion of depth. Yet complexity is not proof of understanding. True intelligence can move between complex and simple forms without losing precision. Performed intelligence hides in obscurity because obscurity is harder to challenge.

If an idea cannot be explained clearly, it is often not because it is profound. It may be because it has not yet been fully understood.

The Closed Loop of Certainty

The most frustrating aspect of the fool’s paradise is correction.

If someone lacks the conceptual tools to detect their own error, evidence does not penetrate. Counterarguments feel like mere disagreement. Data appears biased. Logical analysis sounds like unnecessary complication. The corrective signal never arrives because the receiver is not equipped to process it.

This is why arguing with confident ignorance often feels futile. The problem is not always stubbornness. It is structural limitation.

And here is the uncomfortable truth: every person who has ever been confidently wrong believed they were right at the time. Including you. Including me.

The only reliable antidote is disciplined doubt — not paralyzing insecurity, but the habit of asking, “What might I be missing? Who understands this better than I do? What evidence would change my mind?”

Certainty is comfortable. Doubt is demanding. But doubt is the only way out of the fool’s paradise.

Further Reading

• David Dunning & Justin Kruger (1999), Unskilled and Unaware of It

• David Dunning, Self-Insight: Roadblocks and Detours on the Path to Knowing Thyself

• Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (from Parerga and Paralipomena)

• Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality

• Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

• Bertrand Russell, The Triumph of Stupidity

• Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

• Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!

• Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

• The Article is based on YouTube: Why “Idiots” Think They're Intelligent – Schopenhauer

Who Is Responsible Here?

How cultures carry responsibility — and why this matters in times of change

Image generated with ChatGPT.

Something goes wrong. Not dramatically, not through a single mistake, but slowly and quietly. Plans stall. Expectations drift apart. When the moment comes to ask what happened, no one can quite point to a clear failure. No rule was broken. No promise was openly violated. And yet, something has clearly gone wrong.

Situations like this are familiar — in families, neighbourhoods, communities and societies. We often describe them as failures of leadership or accountability. But beneath those explanations lies a deeper question: how do different cultures understand responsibility itself?

As in the previous blog on low and high-context, we use the concepts of low-context and high-context cultures to make sense of these differences.

In low-context cultures, meaning is carried mainly by words. Communication is explicit. What is said or written matters most, because shared assumptions cannot be taken for granted.

In high-context cultures, meaning is carried largely by context. Much is understood without being said. Relationships, shared history and social cues carry more weight than explicit wording.

Most societies fall somewhere in between. Misunderstandings arise when people assume their own way of carrying meaning is universal.

These differences do not stop at communication. They shape how responsibility itself is carried.

In low-context cultures, responsibility is usually explicit. It is tied to clearly stated commitments, defined roles and visible decisions. Responsibility can be traced: someone agreed, someone decided, someone is accountable.

This approach values clarity and fairness. It allows societies to function at scale, among people who may not know each other well. Responsibility becomes something that can be assigned and reviewed.

In high-context cultures, responsibility is more diffuse and relational. It is embedded in social bonds, mutual expectations and long-standing ties. Responsibility is not always spoken aloud, because it is assumed to be understood. Calling someone out directly can feel less like justice and more like a rupture in the social fabric.

Here, failure is often experienced not as guilt — breaking a rule — but as shame: a disturbance of harmony, a loss of trust, a weakening of the group.

Neither model is morally superior. Each reflects a different way of holding society together.

The contrast becomes especially visible in times of change.

Low-context cultures tend to manage change by rewriting rules. Laws are updated, procedures adjusted, responsibilities redefined. Change is something that can be planned and implemented.

High-context cultures approach change more cautiously. Because responsibility is woven into relationships, change requires renegotiating trust, status and shared expectations. Too much speed can feel destabilising.

This helps explain why reforms that appear perfectly reasonable on paper may meet quiet resistance in practice. One side sees clarity and progress; the other experiences disruption and loss.

History offers many examples. In medieval Spain, Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities lived side by side for centuries, not because they shared beliefs, but because they operated within overlapping yet distinct systems of responsibility. What ultimately failed was not only tolerance, but compatibility.

Similar tensions emerge whenever universal systems meet local worlds. Centralised states encounter regions governed by tradition. Formal institutions meet relational communities. The conflict is not only about power, but about how responsibility is understood and enforced.

Understanding this does not provide easy solutions. But it changes how we interpret failure and resistance. What looks like irresponsibility from one perspective may be an attempt to preserve social coherence from another.

In times of change, the question “Who is responsible?” is never only technical. It is cultural.

Recognising that responsibility can be carried in different ways does not eliminate conflict. But it allows us to see that many fractures are not driven by bad intentions or incompetence — they arise from incompatible expectations, and from the fragile balance between rules and relationships that every society must find for itself.

Cartagena — A City That Doesn’t Reveal Itself at First Glance

Cartagena (Spain).

Cartagena is not a city that flatters you on arrival. You don’t walk into a polished museum town. You arrive in a working port — with container ships, naval docks, faded façades and whole neighbourhoods that seem forgotten by time. Peeling paint, shuttered balconies and crumbling walls sit next to grand buildings that hint at former wealth. The history is everywhere, but it hides behind neglect, dust and industry.

And yet, few cities in Spain carry a deeper past.

Founded by the Carthaginians as Qart Hadasht and later reborn as Roman Carthago Nova, Cartagena became one of the great cities of Hispania, enriched by silver mines and protected by a perfect natural harbour. Romans built theatres, temples and forums — much of which still lies beneath today’s streets.

After Rome came Byzantines, Visigoths and Moors. In the 18th century, the city rose again as Spain’s main Mediterranean naval base. Warships, fortresses and arsenals reshaped the harbour. Cartagena became a military city — and remains one.

Mining brought another boom in the 19th century, followed by decline. When industry faded, whole districts slipped into decay. Only recently has restoration begun, slowly uncovering the buried layers.

Cartagena does not hand you its story. You have to walk its hills, descend into its Roman ruins, explore its civil-war shelters and stand on its harbour quays to understand its power.

It is not pretty in a postcard way. It is raw, complex and monumental.

A city that doesn’t seduce — but rewards.

Sailboats captured against the backlight of the sun, by Pedro Jimenez Vicario. Seen at the Roman Theatre Museum of Cartagena.

L’Entrepôt Italien: A Taste of Italy in the Heart of Provence

Luca, proudly holding a bag of Noisettes du Piémont IGP — the small golden treasures from the hills of Piedmont that turn simple recipes into unforgettable Italian moments.

Step off the beaten path in the charming village of Le Val (in the French department of Var) and you’ll find a place that feels like a little slice of Italy tucked away in the South of France. Here, Luca and his sister have built more than a gourmet store and webshop — they’ve created L’Entrepôt Italien, a welcoming haven for lovers of authentic Italian food, culture, and conviviality.

From the moment you push open the door of this family-run shop, the atmosphere is warm and inviting. It’s not just about food — it’s about stories, traditions, and sharing. Since opening in 2014 in its first humble warehouse in the Var, L’Entrepôt Italien has grown into a beloved destination for cultural explorers and culinary enthusiasts alike. The shop’s ethos is refreshingly simple: offer products you truly believe in, treat every visitor like a friend, and make every purchase an opportunity to experience a bit of Italy.

A Curated World of Italian Delights

Inside the shop and on its webshop, you’ll find more than 150 Italian specialties — artisan pastas, richly flavoured sauces, seasonal collections, and hard-to-find delicacies that make every meal feel like a celebration. Whether you’re planning a leisurely Sunday lunch or crafting an aperitivo inspired by Italian ritual, there’s something to spark joy.

But one range stands out — and it’s a true cultural treasure: the products made from Noisettes du Piémont, the famed Piedmont hazelnuts. Grown in the rolling hills of northern Italy and prized for their intense aroma and delicate texture, these hazelnuts are an epicurean must for anyone serious about Italian flavours.

From roasted IGP Piedmont hazelnuts that are perfect for snacking, to rich hazelnut chocolate spreads and silky hazelnut pastes, this selection reflects both the land and long culinary traditions of Italy. They’re the sort of ingredients that transform a simple dessert into an unforgettable moment around the table.

More Than a Shop — A Cultural Meeting Place

Beyond the shelves and baskets, L’Entrepôt Italien has blossomed into a community space where stories are shared as freely as recipes. Luca and his team’s love for Italian food culture shines through every recommendation, tasting, and friendly conversation. Their blog celebrates this passion too, offering articles on seasonal cooking, Italian culinary traditions, and pairing ideas that feel like guided tours through Italy’s gastronomic landscape.

For travellers wandering Provence, food lovers seeking genuine Italian flavours, and anyone who revels in culinary heritage, L’Entrepôt Italien is a must-visit. It’s where culture and cuisine meet, and where every jar, bottle, and bag tells a story — a story of Italy, shared with warmth in the very heart of the French Riviera hinterland.

• L’Entrepôt Italien

The Journey of the Bells of Santiago de Compostela

Panel depicting the legendary transport of Santiago’s cathedral bells to Córdoba after the sack of 997, and their later return in 1236. Museum of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

If you walk into the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela today, you’ll hear the peal of bells rolling out over the old Galician city. But legend says those same bells once rang in Córdoba, nearly a thousand kilometers to the south, carried there on the shoulders of Christian captives. It is a story that mixes history, humiliation, and perhaps a dash of medieval imagination.

The year was 997. At that time, much of Spain was under Muslim rule. The most powerful figure of the day was Almanzor (al-Mansur), the vizier of Córdoba. He led dozens of campaigns deep into Christian lands, and in 997 he set his sights on Santiago de Compostela, the shrine of Saint James, already a major destination for pilgrims.

According to the chronicles, Almanzor’s army swept through Galicia, defeated local resistance, and sacked the city. Yet, remarkably, the shrine of the Apostle was left untouched—possibly out of reverence, possibly to avoid inflaming Christian devotion further. The rest of the city, though, was destroyed. And then comes the detail that every Spaniard seems to know: the great bells of the cathedral were taken down and carried all the way to Córdoba by Christian prisoners.

For over two centuries, the bells are said to have hung in the great mosque of Córdoba, turned upside down and used as lamps. Then, in 1236, when King Ferdinand III of Castile conquered Córdoba, the tables were turned. Muslim captives were forced to carry the bells back to Santiago, where they rang once again for the Apostle.

It’s a great story—almost too great. And here’s where the historian’s caution comes in. The earliest references to the bells being taken come from chronicles written long after the events, in the 12th and 13th centuries. They were compiled in León and Castile, at a time when Christian rulers wanted to stress both the humiliation inflicted by Muslim rulers and the glorious reversal brought by the Reconquista. Was it true? Possibly. Did Almanzor take trophies from Santiago? Certainly—he was famed for parading spoils through Córdoba. But whether the cathedral bells really made the long march twice is harder to prove. Archaeology has yet to confirm the tale, and the silence of contemporary Muslim sources makes us wonder.

Still, the story endures because it captures so much: the clash of faiths, the rise and fall of empires, and the way symbols can weigh as heavily as iron. To carry a bell is to carry the voice of a city, the call of a people. And whether or not every detail happened exactly as told, the legend of Santiago’s bells continues to echo, reminding us how memory and myth shape the past.

Further Reading

• Roger Collins, The Arab Conquest of Spain, 710–797 (Blackwell, 1989) – for context on the early Muslim presence in Iberia.

• Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain (University of California Press, 1992) – a clear narrative of Al-Andalus, including Almanzor’s campaigns.

• Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065–1109 (Princeton University Press, 1988) – helpful background on the Christian kingdoms where the story of the bells was later shaped.

• Ramón Menéndez Pidal, La España del Cid (Espasa-Calpe, 1929) – a Spanish classic that discusses the building of historical myths.

El Cenachero — The Man Who Carried the Sea into Málaga (Spain)

El Cenachero (Malaga, Spain).

At the edge of Málaga’s harbour, where cruise ships now glide in and out and tourists sip cocktails in the sun, stands a bronze figure with bare chest, strong shoulders and two baskets of fish hanging from a wooden yoke. His name is El Cenachero — and he is one of the most recognisable symbols of the city.

Long before Málaga became a destination of beach clubs and boutique hotels, it was a working port. Every morning, fishing boats landed their catch on the sand. From there, men known as cenacheros carried the fish into the city, balancing two wicker baskets (cenachos) on their shoulders and walking from street to street selling the day’s harvest.

They were not merchants in shops. They were moving markets.

With loud voices they announced their arrival:
“Boquerones frescos!”
“Sardinas vivas!”

The cenachero walked barefoot or in worn sandals through the heat, his skin darkened by the sun and the sea. His work was hard, his pay modest, but his role essential. Without him, Málaga did not eat.

The statue near the port is not a monument to a general or a king. It is a tribute to labour. To the men who turned the sea into daily bread. To a city that once lived by nets and boats, not by hotels and terraces.

In the 1960s, when tourism began to transform Málaga forever, El Cenachero became a reminder of the old city — a link to the fishermen, the beaches where boats were pulled ashore, and the voices that once echoed through the narrow streets.

Today, visitors photograph him before boarding cruise ships or strolling along Muelle Uno. Few realise they are standing next to a worker who once fed an entire city.

El Cenachero is Málaga in bronze: salt, sun, sweat — and dignity.

Alfonso VIII and Leonor of England — A Royal Marriage Carved in Stone

The painted limestone tombs of a Alfonso VIII and Leonor of England who shaped medieval Spain (Abbey of Las Huelgas in Burgos).

Among the many remarkable royal tombs in the abbey of Las Huelgas in Burgos, two stand out for both their artistry and their story: those of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and his wife Leonor Plantagenet, daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Their monumental sarcophagi, carved from polychrome limestone, still retain traces of medieval colour — a rare survival that adds warmth and humanity to these otherwise austere royal monuments.

Alfonso VIII (1155–1214) became king as a child after his father Sancho III died when he was only three. His early reign was marked by civil war and rival noble families fighting for control of Castile. Only in his late teens did Alfonso truly assume power, ruling with determination and political vision.

In 1170 he married Leonor of England, a princess raised in one of the most sophisticated courts of medieval Europe. Through her mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Leonor brought the cultural refinement of southern France and England into the Castilian court. Their marriage was both a political alliance and, by medieval standards, an unusually stable and effective partnership.

Together they ruled for more than forty years. Alfonso became one of the central figures of the Reconquista, culminating in the decisive Christian victory over the Almohads at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) — a turning point in Iberian history.

Leonor played an active role as queen. She founded monasteries, supported learning, and acted as a diplomatic bridge between Castile, England and France. Under their patronage, Las Huelgas grew into one of the most powerful abbeys in medieval Europe, closely bound to the royal dynasty.

They had eleven children, many of whom married into the royal houses of Europe, weaving Castile into a vast international network of alliances.

Alfonso died in 1214, Leonor only weeks later. They were laid to rest side by side beneath their painted limestone tombs — not just funerary monuments, but enduring witnesses to a reign that shaped the political and cultural future of medieval Spain.

In the cool silence of Las Huelgas, their story still rests in stone — coloured, carved, and quietly magnificent.

From Hunger to Guillotine: The French Revolution

Execution of Louis XVI at the Place de la Révolution, Paris, 21 January 1793. Contemporary engraving.

Europe likes to imagine its revolutions as clean turning points: old world out, new world in.
The French Revolution was nothing of the sort. It was noisy, contradictory, intoxicating—and deeply human. It did not begin with blood, but with paper: with lists of complaints, with hunger, with words that—once printed and repeated—acquired a force of their own.

A pressure cooker ready to burst

By the late 1780s, France was a kingdom running on fumes. Decades of war had hollowed out the treasury: the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), and—most ruinously—financial and military support for the American War of Independence. Victory abroad had produced bankruptcy at home.

The tax system deepened the fracture. Nobles and clergy enjoyed exemptions, while peasants and urban labourers carried the fiscal burden. Bread—always bread—had become scarce and ruinously expensive after poor harvests in 1787–1788. Hunger ceased to be private suffering and became public anger.

Material hardship alone, however, does not make a revolution. What truly destabilised France was expectation. Enlightenment ideas—circulating through salons, pamphlets, Masonic lodges, and provincial academies—had been shaped by thinkers such as Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau. They promoted ideas of rational government, citizenship, legal equality, and popular sovereignty.

When Louis XVI convened the Estates-General in 1789, he meant to resolve a fiscal crisis. Instead, he exposed a crisis of legitimacy. The cahiers de doléances—the lists of grievances drafted across the kingdom—were explosive. People no longer pleaded for mercy; they demanded laws, rights, and accountability. Once expectations begin to rise faster than institutions can adapt, history accelerates.

From reform to rupture

The storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789 is often remembered as a spontaneous eruption of rage. In reality, it was symbolic theatre with irreversible consequences. The fortress itself mattered less than what it represented: arbitrary royal power, suddenly vulnerable.

What followed was not a straight line but a widening spiral. Feudal privileges were abolished. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen proclaimed universal principles of liberty and equality. The king was recast as a constitutional monarch—then, slowly and fatally, redefined as an enemy of the nation.

By 1792–1793, France was at war with Europe—and with itself. Externally, revolutionary France faced the War of the First Coalition, fighting Austria, Prussia, Britain, Spain, and others who feared the spread of revolutionary contagion. Internally, counter-revolutionary uprisings and royalist conspiracies multiplied.

Fear hardened into policy. Suspicion became civic virtue. The revolution radicalised because it felt surrounded, betrayed, and unfinished. This was the moment when newspapers ceased merely to describe events and began to mobilise readers, compressing time, moral nuance, and restraint into urgent calls for action.

Ink, anger, and the street

Revolutionary Paris was flooded with print: pamphlets, posters, journals—cheap, fast, emotional. None more influential than L’Ami du peuple, written by Jean-Paul Marat.

A notorious example appeared in early September 1792, when Marat warned that imprisoned “enemies of the people” would soon rise against the Revolution. He named generals, ministers, and aristocrats, arguing that pre-emptive violence was an act of public salvation. Within days, the September Massacres followed. Whether Marat caused them or legitimised them remains debated—but his words undeniably shaped the moral climate.

Marat did not inform his readers; he warned them. He named enemies. He framed violence as prevention. His writing remains uncomfortable because it is effective: short sentences, absolute moral divisions, no space for doubt. The world is split between the people and their enemies, and hesitation itself becomes betrayal.

Alongside him, Le Père Duchesne spoke in the voice of the street—coarse, furious, deliberately vulgar. It sounded like Paris shouting back at power.

By contrast, Révolutions de Paris attempted to narrate events rather than inflame them. Its reports of the journées of August 1792, for example, describe crowds, rumours, and violence with a degree of narrative distance—an excellent source if you want a contemporaneous account that still resembles storytelling.

Words mattered because they collapsed the distance between thought and action.

Terror as a system

The execution of Louis XVI in January 1793 shattered the final restraints.

Regicide changed the nature of the Republic overnight. It was now absolute—or doomed.

The Terror did not erupt spontaneously; it was organised. Revolutionary tribunals, surveillance committees, denunciation lists. The guillotine was not a mob weapon but an administrative one. What makes this period so unsettling is not merely its brutality, but its logic. Violence was redefined as moral hygiene. Death became a tool of clarity.

Even so, the revolution devoured its own prophets: the men who had given it its language, its moral certainty, and its sense of inevitability. Jean-Paul Marat, whose writings in L’Ami du peuple taught Parisians to see violence as civic necessity, was murdered in 1793. Jacques Hébert, the voice of radical popular anger and editor of Le Père Duchesne, was sent to the guillotine in 1794. Maximilien Robespierre—a lawyer, architect of the Terror, and believer that virtue and terror were inseparable instruments of republican purity—followed them to the scaffold soon after.

The revolution could not stop proving its own purity.

After the fire

By 1795, France was exhausted. Power passed to the Directory, a five-man executive body meant to stabilise the Republic and prevent both royalist restoration and popular dictatorship. It promised order and delivered corruption, political paralysis, and reliance on military force.

Stability returned only with a general who understood both revolution and discipline: Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon closed the revolutionary chapter while exporting its consequences. By “exporting,” contemporaries meant conquest—but also institutions. Legal equality before the law, secular administration, rationalised taxation, and codified civil rights travelled across Europe with French armies. The revolution failed to remain democratic, but it succeeded in making the old order impossible to restore unchanged.

France never fully recovered from 1789. It learned to live with a dangerous idea: that legitimacy flows upward from the people—and that crowds, once awakened, do not easily fall silent again.

The “Conclamatio” Relief – A Roman Farewell Reimagined

Funerary Ceremony, called the Conclamatio — marble relief made in northern Italy around 1500–1515, a Renaissance imitation of an ancient Roman scene showing the ritual calling of the deceased’s name at a funeral. The work is now held in the Louvre Museum, Paris.

The Scene

This marble relief, created in northern Italy around 1500–1515, is a Renaissance imitation of an ancient Roman work. Now housed in the Louvre, it depicts the conclamatio — the moment in a Roman funeral when family and attendants called aloud the name of the deceased.

At the center lies the body on a klinē, surrounded by mourners and musicians. Two figures raise wind instruments, amplifying the chorus of grief. Beneath the couch rest a pair of sandals and a small dog — tokens of loyalty and life left behind. To the left, a ritual flame burns; above, a draped cloth marks the threshold between the living and the dead.

The Meaning

The conclamatio confirmed death and released the deceased from the world of the living. It was both ritual and recognition — the collective voice of family ensuring that memory began where life had ended. Though carved a millennium and a half after the Roman original, this Renaissance piece captures the essence of the ancient rite: solemnity, movement, and human emotion rendered in stone.

The sculptor’s aim was not to copy but to evoke — to translate the lost sound of ritual into enduring silence. By showing grief as action, not sentiment, the relief bridges two worlds: the classical past and the reflective spirituality of the early sixteenth century.

Reflection

The “Conclamatio” relief reminds us that mourning was once a public act — a communal acknowledgment that someone had lived, and had left. Even as a Renaissance reimagining of antiquity, it preserves the universal impulse to give voice to loss. Across centuries, the echo of that final call still seems to resonate from the marble itself.

Further Reading

• Marie Erasmo, Reading Death in Ancient Rome

• Katherine Carroll, Living Through the Dead

• William H. Heller, Roman Funerary Ritual and Social Memory

La Brocante du Vézelien

La Brocante du Vézelien.

In shadows cast by time’s old hand,
La Brocante waits, a ghost in sand.
Her windows cracked, her paint a sigh,
Yet treasures sleep where dust runs dry.

The door creaks tales of years gone past,
Of once-loved things that couldn’t last.
But step inside, the past will hum,
In faded light, where dreams become.

Beneath the wear, a quiet charm,
Where memory rests in gentle harm.
La Brocante calls, in whispers frail—
A forgotten shop with stories pale.

The Monks Who Collected the World — Steyl’s Holy Zoo

Stuffed animals at the Missiemuseum in Steyl — a 19th-century vision of faith, science, and the irresistible urge to collect the world.

In the late 19th century, the quiet monastery of Steyl on the river Maas became the unlikely center of a global enterprise. The Missionaries of the Divine Word sent brothers and priests to every corner of the world — to preach, to teach, and, as it turned out, to collect. From the tropics and the savannas, from jungles and islands, they shipped back not only souls saved but animals stuffed.

What began as a pious wish — to show the richness of God’s creation — soon grew into something much larger. Crates arrived from China, Indonesia, New Guinea, and Africa, filled with birds in brilliant plumage, coiled snakes, monkeys, and even big cats. In Steyl’s Missiemuseum, they were arranged behind glass: lions beside antelope, parrots beside penguins, all labeled with elegant handwriting and missionary pride.

Over time, the collection grew into a menagerie of wonder and contradiction — part natural history, part sermon, part obsession. The monks called it education; visitors might have called it awe. Looking at it today, with rows upon rows of creatures staring out through dusty glass eyes, one senses how missionary zeal and Victorian collecting fever merged into a single act of devotion — and domination.

The result is astonishing and a little unsettling: a frozen ark, a world gathered in faith and fervor. In Steyl, the brothers tried to bring God’s creation home — and ended up capturing the wildness of an entire world inside the stillness of glass.

Five Classic Geysers in a Spanish Window

Five classic geysers (León, Spain).

Somewhere in León, I stop before a small shop window. Behind the glass hang five classic geysers, displayed like relics from another age — white, rounded, solid, and strangely human. They look as if they still belong to a world where things were built to last and gas was simply there.

I think of home — of how in The Netherlands we talk of little else but transition. No more gas, no more burning, no more delay. Every boiler, every flame, every old system has become a symbol of guilt.

Here, though, no one seems in a hurry to erase the past. These quiet machines just wait for someone who still buys them, still needs them, is still dependent on them.

I catch my reflection in the glass: the street behind me, cars passing, the faint trace of my own doubt. Maybe progress isn’t only about moving forward. Maybe it’s also about remembering the warmth we’re trying so hard to replace.

The Tree of Jesse in the Wormser Dom

The Tree of Jesse in the Wormser Dom.

The relief of the Tree of Jesse in the Cathedral of St. Peter (Wormser Dom) presents the genealogy of the Holy Family with remarkable depth and grace.

At the base lies Jesse of Bethlehem, father of King David, from whose side a small tree trunk emerges. From this trunk rises a tangled yet elegant vine, filling the pointed Gothic arch with twisting branches and leaf-like crockets.

Along these branches sit or stand a succession of royal and prophetic ancestors of Christ, each set within the foliage:

• King David, often depicted with a harp

• King Solomon, wearing a crown and holding a scepter or book

• Other kings of Judah such as Hezekiah, Josiah, or Zedekiah, marked by regal insignia

• The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, holding scrolls with messianic prophecies

• Figures sometimes identified as the Virgin’s parents, Joachim and Anne, or other key ancestors named in the Gospel genealogies

High above them all, at the tree’s flowering crown, sits the Virgin Mary enthroned with the Christ Child, the final and perfect bloom of Jesse’s lineage.

Flanking the arch are additional full-length figures:

• Evangelists or apostles, recognizable by their books or scrolls

• A bishop or abbot in mitre and vestments, possibly representing a donor or the ecclesiastical authority who commissioned the work

This exuberant Gothic carving is far more than decoration. It transforms Isaiah 11:1—“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse”—into a vivid three-dimensional family tree. Its carefully portrayed kings, prophets, and evangelists link the Old Testament to the New, proclaiming Christ as both heir of David and fulfillment of ancient prophecy.

A City Woven Around a Theatre: Roman Cartagena Revealed

The Roman Theatre of Cartagena (Spain).

At first glance, Cartagena doesn’t give much away. Traffic, shops, everyday life — and then a doorway draws you inside a modern building that quietly functions as a museum. What begins as an exhibition visit slowly turns into something else.

You move upward first, not down. On the upper floor, a long, enclosed passage opens — a tunnel that leads you forward in time as much as in space. And then, almost without warning, the Roman theatre appears.

You emerge halfway into the structure, suspended between the highest rows of seats and the orchestra below. It is an unusual entrance, and a deliberate one. Rather than discovering the theatre under the city, you enter it within the city — inserted into its surviving geometry.

A stage for a rising empire

The theatre was built at the very beginning of the Roman Empire, during the age of Augustus. Its scale alone tells a clear story. This was not a peripheral town. Carthago Nova was prosperous, strategically located, and confident enough to claim a monumental public building at its core.

Roman theatres were never just places for entertainment. They were instruments of civic identity. To build one was to declare that this city belonged to the Roman world — culturally, politically and socially.

Politics carved into space

In antiquity, visitors passed beneath inscriptions honouring the imperial family before taking their seats. The message was subtle but constant: Rome was present here, watching, legitimising, ordering the city’s public life.

Inside, society was arranged in stone. The best seats lay closest to the orchestra, reserved for those whose status mattered. Architecture reinforced hierarchy long before a word was spoken on stage. Even today, standing among the tiers, that logic remains visible and instinctively readable.

Architecture that directs attention

Roman theatres are machines for focus. The rising cavea pulls your gaze downward, towards the orchestra and the stage. Movement, sightlines and sound were carefully controlled. Cartagena’s theatre still demonstrates this with remarkable clarity.

Behind the stage once stood a richly decorated architectural façade, filled with columns and statues. Performances unfolded within a setting designed to communicate order, authority and permanence — values Rome was eager to project.

Rediscovered, not reconstructed

For centuries, the theatre disappeared beneath later construction. Houses, streets and churches reused its stone and obscured its form. It was not dramatically destroyed, but slowly absorbed by the city that grew on top of it.

Its rediscovery in the late twentieth century returned a missing chapter to Cartagena’s story. Today, the museum route does not try to recreate the illusion of a buried ruin. Instead, it guides you carefully into the structure itself, allowing the theatre to reveal its scale and logic gradually.

A city that faces the sea

Carthago Nova is a Mediterranean harbour city, outward-looking and well connected. Trade, administration and wealth passes through its port. The theatre belongs to that identity: public, ambitious, confident.

What makes the visit especially powerful is the contrast. Modern buildings press close around the ancient structure. The theatre is not isolated; it coexists with the present. You do not step back into a distant past — you step into a layer of the city that still shapes it.

Rome here is not a postcard ruin. It is architecture that still commands space, attention and meaning.