Sharon Waxman

COLYBITHRES, Paros – Everyone should see Colybithres; the world would be a calmer place. It is a cove facing the town of Naoussa on the island of Paros, accessible mainly by boat, a noisy junk that for $3 motors you across to paradise. Along the way, the Aegean is bright blue beneath the prow, a…

I spoke briefly by phone yesterday to Marion True, the former Getty curator now dangling in the legal winds in Italy and Greece. And I spoke at great length to her friends, dotted around the island. Every story has two sides. Yesterday I heard the story of a much respected, widely beloved scholar who devoted…

PAROS, Greece – The sun is quickly sinking over the bay of Paros, a honey-orange ball easing its way beyond the undulating hillside of this island. The light has cast a pinkish hue over the water, while a huge ship – Blue Star Ferries – slides into the port, with tourists mainly eager to mount…

Quick word of thanks to you readers who have been so responsive to and supportive of this blog. Coincidentally, several of you wrote in today to ask me to include friends’ emails on the bloglist, which of course I’m delighted to do. Hopefully I’m doing something right. Tonight I was at the opening of a…

This is a view of the Parthenon from inside the new Acropolis Museum, where frantic construction continues on the $170 million museum being erected at the base of the historic hill. The museum, monolithic from the outside but spacious and airy on the inside, is a grand statement to the world about Greece’s ability to…

The Times corrected an element of a piece of mine that ran in Sunday Styles about Ron Boyer, the porn star who is seeking to become an Episcopalian priest. A few readers have asked me to explain, and for those interested, I do so here.

I need to take a moment to tell you about the spectacular, historic hotel where I’m staying for a few days in Athens. The hotel Grande Bretagne is linked in every way with the tumultuous changes that have transformed this country from a dusty outpost of the Ottoman Empire into a modern, independent Greek state.…

My heart still aches over the loss to Los Angeles of this exquisite piece.  It was, however, apparently looted. And bought by the Getty Museum. And demanded by Greece. And sent back in March of this year. Here it is, in the National Archeology Museum in Athens. 

  Stumbling bleary-eyed to the rooftop of the Grand Bretagne Hotel, a stately, Baroque palace of a hotel in the heart of Athens, I squint as the bright sun floods the terrace. And there, as if you could touch it, is the Parthenon on its rocky outcrop. A crane is perched next to the famous…

This is how it looks up close.

I travelled a very long way to get this photo of the rarest of antiquities. And it’s a fake. Therein lies a disturbing tale. This is the museum in Usak, a small city in central Turkey, which houses the treasures of King Croesus in 6th Century BC, a cache of 363 gold, silver and other…

Readers here may recall my mention of Libya asking for Italy to return a statue, and I wasn’t sure if it was voluntary or not on Italy’s part. Guess what: Not. Voluntary. The Art Newspaper has an amusing piece about how an Italian group is dragging its feet in returning the statue (pictured), despite an…

I’m doing something somewhat crazy – bussing it around the country. This is an education in itself. The bus system is well-organized and extremely civilized, designed for an evermore sophisticated populace. The bus I’m on is to Usak, a two-horse town in the middle of western Turkey, and it has movie service, and a server…

I’m posting this as a special request from a reader, who remembers with awe the Alexander sarcophagus in the Istanbul Archeological Museum. This piece is a wonder, found in Sidon, Lebanon in 1873 by Hamdi Osman, Turkey’s first archeologist. Alexander the Great is the figure at the far left, cape flying, horse rearing high, as…

ANTALYA — Domestic travel in Turkey, nation of 73 million, like in Egypt, a nation of similar size (80 million), is like a trip back in time in the United States, once upon an Osama. Imagine not having to stand in a security line a half-mile long to get to the plane, not to take…