This week I had the privilege of visiting FAO MuNe in Rome, guided by the wonderful Emma Gilardi and Simona Vani. MuNe is FAO’s new museum of nutrition and food culture, and it’s incredible!

Accessible, visually stunning, and genuinely thought-provoking… I’m still thinking about the Uzbek tandyr oven and the Romanesque agricultural calendar days later. 😍

If you’re in Rome, put this on your list. Huge congratulations to everyone who brought it to life! 🙌

#FAO #UN #Rome #Food #Museum ...

Nothing like having a big old cry in the middle of the Vatican Museums. This week I finally came across something I hadn’t yet seen in person: a sculpture fragment from a 3rd century sarcophagus discovered on the Appia Antica, depicting the interior of a Roman bakery, and crucially, the horses labouring within it.

It immediately brought to mind the chapter in Apuleius’ The Golden Ass where Lucius, transformed into a donkey, is put to work in a bakery. The passage has always struck me for its dual perspective: Lucius describes both his own experience at the mill and the poor conditions of the enslaved people working alongside him. I’ve always read it as Apuleius quietly asking the reader to reckon with cruelty, whether toward animals or humans.

Standing in front of such beautifully sculpted evidence of that world makes the text feel very immediate. Maybe Apuleius also stopped to talk to the horses in the street. I like to think he did.

(Translation of The Golden Asse: Adlington (1566)).

#Roman #Bakery #Horses #literature #Archaeology ...

Hello, beauteous England! ❤️
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#england #flying #britishairways #home #sky ...

Behind every loaf of bread is a team of workers: farmers who cultivate the grain, millers who grind it, bakers who shape and fire it, and the many hands that carry it from field to table. In the ancient world, this chain of labour was visible, shared, and woven into daily life. Bread was never just food: It was the product of collective effort, skill, and time. Remembering that labour reminds us that every loaf, past or present, is an expression of human partnership and connection. Thank you to @__al_vecchio_mulino__ for our new connection and for working with us to carry forward one of the oldest labours in human history: the making of bread. I cannot get enough of it and neither can any of you! We are kindred spirits! 🙏
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#bread #roman #work #team #history ...