(The Courtyard, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum)Janet Ramin - What do you get when you mix a Venetian palace, priceless artwork, a female patron, and a daring art robbery? If you answered the Guggenheim Museum in Venice, you’re only partially right, but if you came up with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, then you’ve hit bull’s-eye! These ingredients make for a thrilling history, maybe even for a movie. The Gardner Museum is back in the news with a reopening this past January after going through renovations and the addition of a new wing by Italian architect Renzo Piano - see below. The original building is seen at the right corner.
(New Wing of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum)Modeled after a 15th-century Venetian palazzo, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has always been considered a jewel among small museums, mainly for its masterpiece collection but also because of its beautiful, intimate and atmospheric space. It was also infamous for a dramatic art heist, still unsolved to this day. If you’re hunting for a Degas or a Vermeer painting, you may still uncover a hidden treasure out there!
(postcard of original Gardner Palazzo)The Gardner Museum is also one of the very few museums started by
(Biltmore Hotel - Front)Janet Ramin - As a young boy, George Merrick traveled to Spain, explored medieval castles, towers, Moorish courtyards and pools, and developed a passion for them. Fast forward several years later, Merrick becomes a real estate developer and teams up with hotel magnate, John McEntee Bowman, to create a grand hotel, a destination magnet for the rich and famous. The Biltmore Hotel is born.
As you curve around the lush rolling green park, a Moorish tower arises and a Mediterranean palazzo appears majestically to fill out the horizon. For a moment, you may imagine you’re in Italy or on the plains of Spain but then the palm trees appear – snapping you out of the dream – and back to Coral Gables, Florida. Merrick wanted to recreate his childhood haunts and hired architect Leonard Schultze to achieve his dream.
Using the Giralda tower in Seville, Spain as inspiration, Scultze created the bell tower of the Biltmore and centered it in the palazzo-style hotel building. In the center of the hotel is
Sarah Van Arsdale - When thinking of last-minute summer travel, Mexico may not be the first place that comes to mind. But consider this, Señora: airfares to Mexico are lower in the summer, and it won’t be any hotter there than it is in northern North America. Whether you actually go there yourself or just want to enjoy a desktop trip, we’ve found Hacienda Las Trancas: a place that is so beautifully designed it would be a pleasure to visit any time of the year. Let’s take a look at how the designers put it all together to create a space that’s welcoming, soothing, and exciting all at once.
(photo: Hacienda Las Trancas)
After all, design this good knows no season. Let’s start our tour at the front of the building, since we know from the wisdom of feng shui that a welcoming entrance to any building or apartment is crucial in that it sets the tone for the entire experience.
Janet Ramin - One of the greatest gifts Greece gave to civilization was their classical style of architecture. Mention Greek architecture to anyone and images of columns and moldings pop up. Chances are, there's a Greek-style building in your town. The Greek classical style was born in the Golden Age of Greece—during the 5th century BC—and it's never disappeared. Greek architecture has been copied and modified throughout the centuries, right down to the present age. Even the word architecture is Greek in origin; it's from arkhitekto, meaning master builder.