Summer of 2021: the moment has come to set out on a hike up the highest of France’s volcanoes. The most majestic, the most impressive. Their ‘chief’! The one we would come to call ‘The Great Volcano’: Puy de Sancy, 1,885 meters in altitude. The name ‘Sancy’ Every year, on August 6, the inhabitants of the surrounding villages would climb up here, to the summit, in a pilgrimage held to honor the memory of Saint Sixtus (pope between 257 and 258). Around the year 1786, they began saying they were...

The descent from the Europa Nova television car, in the village below Bran Castle, felt like the gesture of a pilgrim who had finally reached the promised place. It was one of those mornings when the mist did not conceal, but revealed: it clung to the towers and the rock like an unspoken promise. Seen from the valley, the castle seemed suspended between sky and stone, and pausing for a few moments before the ascent felt almost necessary. Bran does not offer itself in haste; it demands...

The third part of the series dedicated to the 1989 Revolution describes how, by whom, in what manner, and with what means it was diverted into a coup d’état. Part One is titled “The Army and the Revolution,” and Part Two is “The Mastodon Awakens.” 16–22 December: from “Down with Ceaușescu!” to “Down with Communism!” Timișoara The Revolution began in Timișoara, Romania’s second‑largest city and, at the time, its most Western‑oriented. On 15 and 16 December, the parishioners of Pastor László...