Innercities: Cultural Guides

Athens is an historical anomaly. Excavations date its first settlement to over seven thousand years ago, yet it only became the capital of Greece in 1834. During the intervening centuries it was occupied by almost every mobile culture in Europe: from its earliest likely settlers, tribes from what is now Albania, to Nazi forces during the second World War, and in between by successive waves of Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Slavs, Goths, Venetians, French, Catalans, Turks, Italians, Bulgarians and the clans of various kings and tyrants of the region's early city-states. There has been a structure on its 'high city', the acropolis, since at least the bronze age, although it was subsequently altered by successive occupiers, becoming a fort, castle, temple, mosque, church and even a harem. its 'Golden age' peaked in the fifth century BCE, with the great building projects of Pericles and Themistocles, and its later history is one of a city already nostalgic for its past, although at a time when other European cities had yet to begin constructing a past. Its standing as the birthplace of democracy and western civilisation, while based in fact, is largely a romantic fantasy dreamt up by nineteenth-century north European artists and intellectuals: democracy has a checkered history in Athens, and 'western civilisation' was an amalgam of many cultures.

Nick Caistor has lived for several years in Buenos Aires as well as visiting it often over the past three decades. He has reported on Argentina for the BBC and is a translator as well as the author of several books on Latin America. The architect Le Corbusier once called Buenos Aires the capital of an imaginary empire . From its foundation in the sixteenth century, Argentina's main city has been a place of the imagination as well as the scene of many striking historical events. From foreign invasions to more modern-day coups d état and dictatorships, the city's turbulent history has been paralleled by a vibrant popular culture born out of the hardships of immigration and longing for a lost homeland. This cultural guide looks at the impact of history and the efforts of men and women to build a city that would fulfil their dreams, as well as bringing today s Buenos Aires vividly to life for the visitor. From the new skyscrapers along the front of the huge river of silver to the picturesque portside Las Boca where hundreds of thousands of immigrants first faced a new continent, Buenos Aires has created its own legend, lived out today in tango bars, on football pitches, in cafés where intense debates take place, or people simply watch the ever-changing parade of passing inhabitants. Nick Caistor takes the reader to the insider s Buenos Aires. He shows how the past has shaped its streets, how Argentine politics has left its mark on almost every corner, how each wave of new inh...

Bath, Queen of the West, is internationally famous as one of England's oldest and most beautiful cities. The picturesque setting in the Avon valley, surrounded by green hills knit town and country together. The hot mineral springs welling up from deep within the earth have given it unique advantages as a health and leisure resort. The Romans called the city Aquae Sulis, and below the modern city are the important Roman Baths, one of England's top tourist attractions. In medieval times a great abbey grew up here, a centre of scholarship as well as religion. Bath was an important Cotswold weaving centre before becoming a great Georgian spa city. As taking the waters became an increasingly attractive leisure activity for visitors, a number of charity hospitals grew up around the hot springs. Then in the eighteenth century, great men such as Beau Nash the Master of Ceremonies and John Wood the architect transformed Bath into the grand Georgian city which we know today. Writers such as Henry Fielding and Jane Austen, and artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, settled in Bath. John Payne reflects on the diversity of the modern city, where industry, sport and shopping take their place alongside tourism and heritage. He considers the continuing importance of religious faith in the city and the contribution to Bath's cultural life made by its two universities and the many festivals, of which the winter Literature Festival and the springtime Bath International Music Festival are just...