People have lived in the Madrid area since prehistoric times. Occupied by Romans, Moors, and then the Spanish, it has quite the history. Over 6.8 million people live in Madrid. That’s less than Paris and London but more than Berlin. Of course, a capital city will boast a few ghost stories. The ghosts of those…

In this chat, I’m talking to illustrator Katy Horan about murder ballads, discussing what they are, how they work within folk music, how contemporary musicians have tried to reclaim the tradition, and the issues with examining ballads when all you might have is the lyrics! Katy Horan is an illustrator and interdisciplinary artist whose work…

If you head away from the hustle and bustle of the Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square), you’ll head into the stranger, more magical part of Venice. It’s in the tangle of narrow streets and courts that you enter the realm of Venetian legend. It’s difficult to know how many of them have any basis…

Dublin is a beautiful city that straddles the River Liffey, famous as the home of Guinness and the National Leprechaun Museum. What you might not expect from the Irish capital is a series of Dublin ghost stories. Though why not? The city enjoys a millennium of history, including Viking settlement, economic hardship caused by the…

Florence was founded in the 1st century BCE as a Roman military outpost, although it came to prominence as a centre of commerce and the arts in the 14th to 16th centuries CE. The Florentine method of speech even became the Italian language. Some of the city’s most famous exports are Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo,…