If you look out over Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo, high above the Arno, two domes catch your eye. One is Filipo Brunelleschi’s masterpiece, the immense ribbed dome of the Duomo. The other, off to the right, is much smaller but in its way also distinctive: It is the tall, bright green copper dome of the…
Once upon a time, there were only a few ways to rest your head during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There were kibbutzim — which often required a week or month or year of volunteer work. There were campgrounds, though they required gear. There was the elderly cousin’s couch in central Tel Aviv, but…
It looks as though there might be another site added to the Polish Holocaust tourism trail. According to Reuters, Poland is searching for someone to spruce up the Wolf’s Lair, in the northeast of the country, near the Russian border, and open it up to the public. “Wolf’s Lair” was the code name for Adolf…
Travelers preparing to take a train from Rome’s Termini Station can grab some food at a kiosk and pick up a magazine at a newsstand there. And while they’re at it, they can also buy for themselves some Nazi dolls as souvenirs of their stay in the Eternal City. Barak Talmor, an Israeli studying in…
Most people encounter Emma Lazarus only inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. Her sonnet, “The New Colossus,” written in 1883, has become inextricably identified in the public mind with the wave of immigration to the United States from the 1880s until 1924. However, a new free mobile tour produced by the Museum of…
Displaying a statue of Hitler strikes the Shmooze as an inherently bad idea — and sure enough, the one at Madame Tussauds in London is causing problems. England’s Zionist Federation has asked the wax-statue museum to alter its Hitler figure, suggesting it be made to look more “vulnerable,” or posed in a way that prevents…
They’ve arranged visits by Chilean miners and “House” stars, and now the busy bees at Israel’s tourism ministry have their eyes on Martha Stewart and Oprah. As part of a new push to bring celebrity visitors to Israel, the ministry has created a special “hospitality unit” to woo famous foreigners, Yediot Aharonot reported recently. The…
The summer vacation has started in Israel and people are flocking to attractions — theme parks, hotels, shows and festivals. But like most things here, tourism can be politically-loaded. Increasingly frustrated that they are having little luck expanding settlements, settlers and settler sympathizers are increasingly trying to make their mark on the parts of the…
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