With sumptuous palaces, exquisite artworks and stunning architecture, every great city offers a dizzying multitude of artistic highlights. In this series, art historians Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke take us on three cultural city breaks, hunting for off-the-beaten-track artistic treats - and finding new ways of enjoying some very famous sights. In this opening episode, they head to Amsterdam, a city that pioneered so much of modern life, from multinational trade to the way we design our homes. To find out how, Alastair and Janina take us on a fast paced tour of the city's cultural hotspots. Picking their way through the crowds queuing to see Rembrandt at the Rijksmuseum, they also introduce us to the paintings of Jan Steen, a Dutch legend whose paintings capture the city's freewheeling lifestyle. They take us on an entertaining tour of the canals that helped build Amsterdam and explore the city's reputation for tolerance in the oldest surviving Jewish library in the world. Along the way, Alastair and Janina discover how art and culture reflect the liberal attitudes, appetite for global trade and love of home comforts that helped shape the character of this trailblazing city.
With sumptuous palaces, exquisite artworks and stunning architecture, every great city offers a dizzying multitude of artistic highlights. In this series, art historians Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke take us on three cultural citybreaks, hunting for off-the-beaten-track artistic treats - and finding new ways of enjoying some very famous sights. In this second episode, Janina Ramirez and Alastair are on a mission to get to know one of the most popular cities in the world through its art and architecture. Although Barcelona is famous for its exuberant modernista buildings, the Gothic Quarter and artistic superstars such as Picasso, Janina and Alastair are determined to discover some less well-known cultural treats. Escaping the crowds on the Ramblas, they seek out the designs of an engineer who arguably put more of a stamp on the city than its star architect, Antoni Gaudi; Alastair marvels at the Romanesque frescoes that inspired a young Miro; whilst Janina discovers a surprising collection of vintage fans in the Mares, one of the city's most remarkable but rarely visited museums. With a behind-the-scenes visit to Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, a session of impromptu Catalan dance and Alastair adding the finishing touches to some Barcelona street art, its a fast-paced and colourful tour of the city's art and artists, revealing how Barcelona developed its distinctive cultural identity and how the long-running fight for independence has shaped the artistic life of the city.
In the final episode of their entertaining series of cultural citybreaks, Dr Janina Ramirez and Alastair Sooke explore St Petersburg through its dazzling art and architecture. They want to see how art has been used to enhance prestige and power in this city, ever since it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great. Surrounded by vast palaces, gilded domes and imposing Soviet monuments, Janina and Alastair make a flying visit to their personal selection of Imperial, Communist and modern-day sights. They discover a city where art has always taken centre stage: from the intoxicating beauty of the state rooms at the Winter Palace to the bejewelled confections of Fabergé; from the dark tunnels where curators guarded precious artefacts during the deadly siege of the city in the Second World War, to the apartment piled high with protest art painted by the outspoken 'dissident babushka'.
Winding through Lisbon's cobbled streets, from its steep hills to the picturesque shoreline, the riches they encounter reveal the city's history. From a spectacular monument, to the maritime globetrotting of Portugal's 'golden age', and the work of a photographer documenting the city's African population, they discover a complex history of former glories and a darker, slave-trading past. Their journey also uncovers the impact of 20th-century dictatorship on the city's artistic and cultural life, through the work of artists Paula Rego and Joana Vasconcelos. They discover how the city's location on the west coast of Europe, looking out to the Atlantic, has shaped the city's cosmopolitan spirit - in one of the city's fado clubs, Alastair and Nina enjoy the popular Portuguese folk music whose melodies celebrate a yearning for home, once sung by sailors dreaming of their return.
Once torn apart by civil war, Beirut has bounced back to rebuild its reputation as a cosmopolitan city with a rich artistic heritage and a level of tolerance and cultural freedom rare in the region. Nina and Alastair's journey takes them up into the surrounding mountains by cable car to an astonishing modern Christian cathedral. Nina is welcomed into an 800-year-old mosque that was once a cathedral built by Crusaders. While Nina discovers how a bullet-ridden house has been transformed into an emotionally powerful war memorial, Alastair meets Bernard Khoury, whose visionary buildings are designed to improve the social fabric of Beirut. Alastair also encounters a street artist paying tribute to an actress who united the city in times of trouble, and Nina takes tea with an elderly Armenian couple who reflect on the city's immigrant experience.
In the final episode of the series, Janina Ramirez and Alistair Sooke set off on their most adventurous trip yet - to Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. A former Soviet state, bordering the Caspian Sea, Baku offers a tantalising mix of the ancient and modern - at the crossroads of east meets west, on the ancient silk trading route. It is also an authoritarian state, where cultural life is tightly controlled. So, not their regular city break... But it is a city looking westwards, eager to turn itself into a tourist destination. They discover a city for which oil has been both a blessing and a curse. The profits from oil transformed its architecture twice - first in the late nineteenth century, and again in the twentieth. As a result, Baku is full of buildings that feel like 19th-century Paris, but also gleaming new structures by architectural stars like Zaha Hadid. And all around, the traces of Soviet rule offer other surprising clashes of art and architecture. Nina and Alastair pick their way through this maze of influences and travel back in time, seeking the roots of Azerbaijani identity. Alastair visits the world's first museum devoted entirely to rugs while Nina marvels at stunning prehistoric rock art on the city's outskirts. Together they wander the medieval old city, discovering the early impact of Islamic culture. And in the stunning Heydar Aliyev Centre designed by Zaha Hadid, they discover an exhibition devoted to Heydar Aliyev, president of Azerbaijan, whose government exerts a strong influence on the city's art and culture. But Alistair also meets Sabina Shikhlinskaya, an artist with a truly independent voice. As night falls they discover why Azerbaijan is known as the 'Land of Fire' when they visit Yanar Dag, a spectacular 10-metre long natural gas fire which blazes continuously. And they end their visit to Baku with a performance of Maugham, Azerbaijan's ancient, haunting folk music as they reflect on their time in a city that has fascinate
