Mediterranean Color: Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Greece

Believing this to be a simple book of photographs highlighting the countries of the Mediterranean area, I quickly found out it was so much more. Yes the photos are beautiful, but they come with historical nuggets and a travelogue, so that I wanted to get up and get back to the celestial blue that is the Med.

Italy is a very old country. In the southern provinces she can fool no one about her age. All the bones and wrinkles show in this dry and rocky land, weary from long, hard struggle against invaders and the tantrums of nature.

Ahh, the "tantrums of nature" indeed. Anyone who has taken a boat ride on a seemingly gorgeous Med day only to end it in a furious wind knows of such tantrums. The Evil Eye is still prevalent, as the golden show more hillsides contrast against the aquamarine sea.

It is difficult to imagine how important a role painted color once played in the architecture of France.

Has anyone else ever noticed that? When you leave Italy to journey to Gaul, it's a bit like leaving a Technicolour movie and arriving in a sepia-toned land. As Jeffrey Becom points out, France was once the land of royal purples and ruby reds, but the Counter-Reformation and the French Revolution put an end to that.

White dominates Spain. The intensely burning sun with its blinding white glare seems to bleach the color from everything.

For me, Spain always represented yellow, but again the author has me review my memories. For all the Moorish greens and oranges of bygone days, the pueblos blancos do dominate. The historical reason given for this is because of Carlos III mandating annual whitewashing with lime in order to defeat the disease epidemics that was rampaging through 18th-century Spain.

The Portuguese are not enamored of novelty nor are they eager to change. Few public clocks can be found, for time means little, even in Lisbon.

Portugal. Where the colours still radiate via chrome yellows, delicate pinks, and the brilliant azulejos. Purple rock, blue-green ocean, yellow sand, scarlet poppies, green vineyards, carob trees. It's like being in a candy store.

Morocco is an exotic, polygamous marriage of Europe, Africa, and Arabia, a unique fusion of the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Sahara.

Rose clay...saffron sand...blood red pomegranates...apricot turbans. Because of strict Islamic tradition regarding painted portraits of man or animal, colour instead becomes of the highest importance, down to the mixing of the paint.

Iris, goddess of the rainbow, gowned in radiant spectrum, was on hand for the birth of Greece - and so were her colors.

Once again, I thought of Greece as "white" but the author sees so much more. He points out that the Greeks lived in vivid colour, but as their age passed and temples crumbled, white became what was left. Albeit, a stunning white against the blue sky and water.

Fantastic.

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