In the 1980’s I mainly travelled in Italy. I would take lots of slides, most on Kodachrome, which had great fame for being the one film that would not age. Now, in some cases 35 or more years later, scanning those slides to present them digitally, I find this to be true. The film was notorious also for its steep contrast, and as all slide films it was better at some colours, and bad at some others, particular in artificial light or shadows. I estimate that after lots of work I’ll present several thousands of slides in their new format on this site.

Being Dutch, living in Amsterdam, I was pleasantly surprised to come across slides of the church where St. Nicolas supposedly was buried. His body was “transferred” from his church in Myra, of which I have many pictures on my Turkey site. The Wikipedia has “When Myra passed into the hands of the Saracens, some saw it as an opportunity to move the saint's relics to a safer location. According to the justifying legend, the saint, passing by the city on his way to Rome, had chosen Bari as his burial place. There was great competition for the relics between Venice and Bari. The latter won, the relics were carried off under the noses of the lawful Greek custodians and their Muslim masters, and on May 9, 1087, were safely landed at Bari.” I recently read that in the Myra church some other sarcophagus has been detected, so the whole story may shift again. Whatever: I here show pictures of the church, and a few of the town. Remember: they were taken at a time when “raw” and the type of camera I now use (going up to 200000 ISO) were not available. I corrected the pictures to a decent state, on which I may improve over time.

I have a confession to make: with all those slides I am sure I mixed some. If you notice, as some people will, mistakes in the captions or attributions of pictures, please write a comment. I myself will do research, using my own books and the web, my experience is that after a while texts will not containe, eh, fake news.