UNITED KINGDOM SUMMER PEARLS: London's architectural gems along the banks of the Thames
MUSIC: Europe's best pop and rock gatherings
BAGPIPES: The plaintive sounds of Scotland
SUBMARIUM: Journey to the bottom of the sea FESTIVALS: Fun in the sun in West Belfast
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FRANCE and SWITZERLAND VULCANIA: Blow your top at France's volcano park
ART: Berthe Morisot, the unknown Impressionist
FESTIVALS: Aix-en-Provence has it all
ART: The Barbizon School painters come to life
ART: Take a stroll through medieval gardens of delight
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SPAIN, PORTUGAL, ITALY and GREECE SALAMANCA: The city splashes out on culture
MUSIC: God's rock stars: the singing Greek monks
FOOD: Italy's unusual culinary delights
FILM: Great outdoor viewing in Rome
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GERMANY and BENELUX HORTICULTURE: The world blossoms at Floriade
BRUGGE: Belgium's second city shines
ART: Berlin's homage to multiculturalism ART: The best of the world's artists on show at Documenta 11 DANCE: Czech twin ballerinos steal the show in Hamburg MORE ..
CENTRAL and EASTERN EUROPE ART: Yugoslavia's modern art museum is back
ART: A retrospective of Samizdat art and writing from the Communist bloc
GRAZ: Austria's little-known city of culture
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THE NORDIC REGION DESIGN: Denmark celebrates Arne Jacobsen
MUSEUM: Get a blast from the past at Stalin World
STOCKHOLM: Welcome to the Venice of the North
MUSIC: Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes on tour MORE ..
PLUS LISTINGS: Other things to see and do in each region
From spicy Bollywood to the big chill
LIVERPOOL: Remixes and samples now drive popular music forward. Tate Liverpool’s exhibition "Remix: Contemporary Art and Pop" shows visual artists such as Rineke Dijkstra, Gillian Wearing, Gary Hume and Gavin Turk using the beats and the culture of pop as their own source of energy. May 24-Aug. 26 • tel: + 44 (0)151 702 7400
• www.tate.org.uk/liverpool
BRADFORD: Bollywood movies are hot around the world now, and Britain is spiced by the success of Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham. So the Bite the Mango film festival will be a juicy slice of black and Asian cinema: new movies jostle with retrospectives of the late Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak and Indian writer/director Shekhar Kapur of Elizabeth fame. June 14-20 • tel: +44 (0)1274 20 20 30 •
www.bitethemango.org.uk
LONDON: Lucian Freud, Britain’s indefatigable genius of realist portraiture, gets the mammoth 140-work retrospective his 60-year career deserves at Tate Britain. June 20-Sept. 22 • tel: +44 (0)20 7887 8000 •
www.tate.org.uk
LONDON: The Royal Shakespeare Company is camping out at one of London’s oddest, most-neglected spaces, the Roundhouse (once a steam locomotive repair shed) for walkabout productions of three of the Bard’s late works. The climax is the epic Pericles, Prince of Tyre, directed by Adrian Noble, in the RSC’s first full tilt at the play since 1969. June 28 -July 13 • tel: +44 (0)870 609 1110
or +44 (0)20 7850 8585 • www.rsc.org.uk/roundhouse
ST. DONATS: The Beyond the Border festival at the remote castle of St. Donats on the south Wales coast brings storytellers of the world to spin their yarns long into the night. This year’s focus on Latin American and Caribbean tales should add some tropical warmth to the revelry, but bring blankets too. july 5-7 • tel: +44 (0)1446 799 100 • www.beyondtheborder.com
ISLE OF LEWIS: Celtic culture has many brogues but perhaps no more atmospheric meeting point than the Isle of Lewis, which has been tuning up its Hebridean Celtic Festival since 1996. Top Celtic musicians this year include Irish "fiddle chick" Mairead Nesbitt, Scotland’s trad-techno crossover Shooglenifty and La Volée d’Castors from Quebec. July 17-20 • tel: +44 (0)7001 87 87 87 •
www.hebceltfest.com
MEY: In 1952, the late Queen Mother bought the decrepit 13th century Castle of Mey near Caithness, Scotland as a retreat following the death of her husband, King George VI. The results of her extensive renovations to both house and gardens now await public approval. From early September • tel: +44 (0)1955 621 697
• www.castleofmey.org.uk
And a last tango in ... EASTNOR: Gotan Project’s La Revancha del Tango has made it the darling of the ambient music scene. Authentic nuevo tango played over house beats and samples, Gotan’s music sounds even better live. The group has gigs all over Europe this summer, including the Big Chill festival at Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire. Aug. 16-18 • tel: +44 (0)20 7688 8080 •
www.bigchill.net
