Vintage Muse du Jour: Rediscovering Chelo Alonso, Cuba’s Answer to Marilyn

She was billed as the human,”Cuban H-Bomb” by American media in the 1950s, ’cause Chelo Alonso was Cuba’s answer to Marilyn Monroe. Simply a force to be reckoned with, she exploded onto the international movie scene in the 1950s as both a dancer, instantly drawing comparisons to Josephine Baker, and as a starlet who carved…

Don’t be a Tourist in Sicily

Sigmund Freud called it “the loveliest region of Italy: a stunning orgy of colors, scents, and lights…a great delight”. Searching for the perfect Autumn getaway? Look no further, because our latest eBook from the Keyholder’s Library is here! Start planning your trip to Sicily now.

The Last Great Beatnik Café

Behind every generation of revolutionary writers, there’s usually a time-worn café. Hemingway had Paris’s La Closerie Des Lilas; Simone de Beauvoir, the Café de Flore. For San Francisco, the cradle of the Beatnik movement – or at least, its caffeine source – was the Caffe Trieste. High on a hilltop in Little Italy, Caffe Trieste was…

Here’s the Secret to Feasting your Way Through Italy like a Local

You’re invited to local food feasts all over Italy – if you know the magic word, that is. Sagre! That’s Italian for festival, one that centres around the annual harvest, celebrating local culture and most importantly – food! So what’s your weakness? Pizza? Pasta? Truffles? Fritto misto alla Piemontese? Whatever your preference, somewhere in Italy,…

This might just be the Largest Collection of Outsider Art to ever Go on Sale

There are a lot of antique collectors on the world wide web. Professional seekers of this-n-that, people who track down rarities solely to turn a profit – which is all fine and well. But Dale Smith is different, and our ears perked up when the story of his collection landed in our inbox. “I don’t…

Botticelli’s Venus Was Real, and the Original Blonde Bombshell

The candles begin to flicker in a damp, baroque room, as cherubs emerge from a flower filled pond, hoisting a clam shell up from its depths. When it finally unhinges, the human incarnation of love itself takes form: “The birth of Venus.” It’s an iconic scene, and one that’s been told time and time again…

Our Glorious, Gaudy Dinner Date at America’s Kitschiest Restaurant

Free for a dinner date tonight? We’ll cosy up under the palm trees, beneath the eyes of Grecian statues and the bubbling of waterfalls; we’ll stroll amongst Medici-inspired gardens and socialise with 200-and-something other guests who’ve ordered a Delmonico steak, or triple-decker monte cristo sammie. Because this is the grande dame of fabulously kitsch American…

Were Romans the First Goths?

The good people of the Roman Empire tend to be remembered as gladiators and prodigious builders of roads, temples and aqueducts who loved to drink lots of wine and end up in bed with their siblings. It’s far less common that we think of Romans as a morbid civilisation, obsessed with their own death culture.…

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Wander through the Sicilian Village in a Cave, Frozen in Time

In the province of Trapani, Sicily, there’s a portal through time about eighty meters high and seventy meters deep. Nestled inside the natural opening of two mountain peaks, lies a tiny village, consisting of quaint earth-colored houses, a chapel, stables, workshops and one cobbled main street. The village “piazza” of Grotto Mangiapane is located at the mouth of the cave where…

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Snapshots from Little Italy’s Summer Street Party

A glittering, 7-story shrine towers over a crowd on a hot July day in Brooklyn. At its base sits a brass band, and below them, 112 men who’ve been entrusted with one seemingly impossible task: to lift that shrine, and its musicians, with their own bare hands into the heart of the madness of the “Giglio…