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Museums are where history stops feeling distant ✨In Madrid, the Royal Collections Gallery brings together royal masterpieces, armour, tapestries and centuries of Spanish heritage 👑🏛️ #VisitSpain #ThinkYouKnowSpain #SpainCulturalHeritage @TurismoMadrid

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48,450 views • 2 months ago •via X (Twitter)

#VisitSpain#ThinkYouKnowSpain#SpainCulturalHeritage
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Happy International Museum Day! 🏛️ In Xiaoshan, museums are more than just places to reflect on the past and the achievements made — they're spaces where history, culture and visions of the future meet. China Museums
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❗️⚠️🇫🇷 - The Louvre Museum in Paris suffered a brazen daylight heist on Sunday, where thieves stole jewelry valued at $102 million (88 million euros) in just seven minutes. Four suspects from an organized crime group used a truck's extendable ladder to access the Apollo Gallery, cut through a window, and break into display cases, fleeing on scooters with eight priceless items, including a diamond-studded crown once owned by Empress Eugenie and an emerald-and-diamond necklace gifted by Napoleon I to Empress Marie-Louise. Authorities are analyzing fingerprints, video footage from the museum and highways, and warn that melting the jewels would diminish their value, emphasizing the irreplaceable loss to France's heritage. Museum director Laurence des Cars, who has led since 2021, faces Senate culture committee scrutiny on Wednesday over security lapses. The Louvre, closed for two days of investigation, plans to reopen Wednesday despite tourist frustration and its regular Tuesday closure. The theft highlights rising threats to French museums: last month, Paris's Natural History Museum lost gold nuggets worth $1.5 million, leading to the detention of a 24-year-old Chinese woman in Barcelona with melted pieces; separately, thieves took two dishes and a vase valued at $7.6 million from a Limoges museum.

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22,751 views • 7 months ago

2025 has been a good comeback year for the Wales family❤️ As Queen Elizabeth was quoted saying: “The lessons from the Peace process are clear: Whatever Life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load”👌🏽 Last year, the Royal family felt like it was crumbling with the “Annus Horribilis” of cancer announcements. And yet, seeing everyone carry on and especially seeing how the Wales family handled all the pressures and challenges they went through as a family is heartwarming to witness. 2024-2025 saw the story of a young family going through challenges and tribulations together and overcoming together❤️ As Prince William said to Brazilian Host Luciano Huck about sharing Catherine’s cancer journey with their children: “Every family has its own difficulties and its own challenges. It's very individual and sort of moment-dependent as to how you deal with those problems", “We choose to communicate a lot more with our children […] Sometimes you feel you're oversharing with the children"👌🏽 "But most of the time, hiding stuff from them doesn't work, and so explaining how they feel, why that's happening, giving them other viewpoints as to why they might be feeling like they are sometimes helps give them a bigger picture, and they can relax more into it rather than being really anxious about 'what are you hiding from me'?". "There's a lot more questions when there's no answers."❤️ One can tell by how this family moves as “one body” that they are a very tight knit family with children who are quite emotional aware and attuned to their parents’ emotions. This, in turn, creates a stronger family bond, and a family that supports each other, overcomes together🔥 This is what we have come to expect of our Royal family: to lead the way in showing the resilience of the British spirit especially during the hard times👌🏽 Thus, this Christmas video of the Wales family reminded me of Prince William saying to Eugene Levy during his how iconic interview: “I’d say 2024 was the hardest year I’ve ever had. You know, life is sent to test us as well, and being able to overcome that is what makes us who we are”❤️ #PrinceandPrincessofWales 📹 Kensington Palace
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Canellecitadelle

37,100 views • 7 months ago

Everyone is posting about Ceuta. Almost nobody knows where it is or why it exists, so let me fix that, because the history is the entire story. Ceuta is not in Spain. It is in Africa. It sits on the north coast of Morocco, an eighteen square kilometre wedge of Spanish soil surrounded by Moroccan territory and the sea. Population around 83,000. Together with Melilla to the east, it forms the only land border the European Union has with the African continent. Look at a map. The Strait of Gibraltar is fourteen kilometres wide at its narrowest. Eight and a half miles. The ancients called the two headlands guarding it the Pillars of Hercules, the Rock of Gibraltar to the north and Monte Hacho, which sits inside Ceuta, to the south. That gate has been the hinge of the Mediterranean world for three thousand years. Now the history, which people keep getting backwards. The Romans held it and called it Septem Fratres, the seven brothers, which is where the name Ceuta comes from. Vandals, then Byzantines. In 711 a Berber commander named Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed that strait and began the conquest of Spain. The rock he landed at still carries his name. Jabal Tariq. Gibraltar. Then it turned the other way. Portugal took Ceuta in 1415, an event historians treat as the opening move of the Age of Discovery. When Portugal regained its independence from the Spanish crown in 1640, Ceuta alone chose to stay Spanish. Portugal formally ceded it in the Treaty of Lisbon in 1668. So Ceuta has been Spanish for 358 years, and European for 611. Morocco, as a modern independent state, has existed since 1956. That matters, because Morocco claims both enclaves as colonial relics. Spain calls them integral national territory and EU soil, which legally they are. And here is the pattern nobody mentions. In 2002 Morocco quietly occupied a tiny uninhabited rock called Perejil, a few hundred metres off the coast. Spain retook it with helicopters and special forces. In May 2021, after Spain admitted the leader of the Polisario Front for medical treatment, Moroccan border guards stood back and roughly 8,000 people walked and swam into Ceuta over two days. Spain's prime minister called it a serious crisis for Spain and for Europe. In 2022 Spain reversed itself and endorsed Morocco's autonomy plan for Western Sahara, and the border trouble stopped. Read that sequence again. The border opens when Madrid displeases Rabat. It closes when Madrid complies. There is a name for that. It is called instrumentalised migration, and the EU used the same language about Belarus pushing people at the Polish frontier. Whether it rises to an act of war is a lawyer's argument. That it is coercion using human beings as the instrument is not seriously disputed by anyone who follows the file. Now the current numbers, and I am going to be careful because everyone else is not. Ceuta's regional president says 60,000 entered, more than seventy percent of the city's population. Spain's Interior Ministry says close to 50,000 since Thursday, and that more than 48,300 have already been returned to Morocco. Al Jazeera reported 1,500 to 2,000 over ten days. Those figures cannot all be true. At least 18 people are dead, drowned or crushed at the breakwater. Some reports say more. Children are sleeping in parks. Spain has deployed the army. Italy is talking about extraordinary measures. The one number I am confident in is the dead one, and it will rise. So before the next hot take flies past you, remember what you are actually looking at. A European city on African soil, older in Spanish hands than the United States has existed, sitting on the narrowest gate between two continents, being used as leverage in a fight about Western Sahara. That is not a migration story. That is a border being used as a weapon, and people are drowning in it. 🦋
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Everyone is posting about Ceuta. Almost nobody knows where it is or why it exists, so let me fix that, because the history is the entire story. Ceuta is not in Spain. It is in Africa. It sits on the north coast of Morocco, an eighteen square kilometre wedge of Spanish soil surrounded by Moroccan territory and the sea. Population around 83,000. Together with Melilla to the east, it forms the only land border the European Union has with the African continent. Look at a map. The Strait of Gibraltar is fourteen kilometres wide at its narrowest. Eight and a half miles. The ancients called the two headlands guarding it the Pillars of Hercules, the Rock of Gibraltar to the north and Monte Hacho, which sits inside Ceuta, to the south. That gate has been the hinge of the Mediterranean world for three thousand years. Now the history, which people keep getting backwards. The Romans held it and called it Septem Fratres, the seven brothers, which is where the name Ceuta comes from. Vandals, then Byzantines. In 711 a Berber commander named Tariq ibn Ziyad crossed that strait and began the conquest of Spain. The rock he landed at still carries his name. Jabal Tariq. Gibraltar. Then it turned the other way. Portugal took Ceuta in 1415, an event historians treat as the opening move of the Age of Discovery. When Portugal regained its independence from the Spanish crown in 1640, Ceuta alone chose to stay Spanish. Portugal formally ceded it in the Treaty of Lisbon in 1668. So Ceuta has been Spanish for 358 years, and European for 611. Morocco, as a modern independent state, has existed since 1956. That matters, because Morocco claims both enclaves as colonial relics. Spain calls them integral national territory and EU soil, which legally they are. And here is the pattern nobody mentions. In 2002 Morocco quietly occupied a tiny uninhabited rock called Perejil, a few hundred metres off the coast. Spain retook it with helicopters and special forces. In May 2021, after Spain admitted the leader of the Polisario Front for medical treatment, Moroccan border guards stood back and roughly 8,000 people walked and swam into Ceuta over two days. Spain's prime minister called it a serious crisis for Spain and for Europe. In 2022 Spain reversed itself and endorsed Morocco's autonomy plan for Western Sahara, and the border trouble stopped. Read that sequence again. The border opens when Madrid displeases Rabat. It closes when Madrid complies. There is a name for that. It is called instrumentalised migration, and the EU used the same language about Belarus pushing people at the Polish frontier. Whether it rises to an act of war is a lawyer's argument. That it is coercion using human beings as the instrument is not seriously disputed by anyone who follows the file. Now the current numbers, and I am going to be careful because everyone else is not. Ceuta's regional president says 60,000 entered, more than seventy percent of the city's population. Spain's Interior Ministry says close to 50,000 since Thursday, and that more than 48,300 have already been returned to Morocco. Al Jazeera reported 1,500 to 2,000 over ten days. Those figures cannot all be true. At least 18 people are dead, drowned or crushed at the breakwater. Some reports say more. Children are sleeping in parks. Spain has deployed the army. Italy is talking about extraordinary measures. The one number I am confident in is the dead one, and it will rise. So before the next hot take flies past you, remember what you are actually looking at. A European city on African soil, older in Spanish hands than the United States has existed, sitting on the narrowest gate between two continents, being used as leverage in a fight about Western Sahara. That is not a migration story. That is a border being used as a weapon, and people are drowning in it. 🦋

Selene Mariposa

85,753 views • 7 days ago

The castles of Europe are some of the most amazing things we’ve inherited from history Between 75,000 and 100,000 castles were built in Western Europe during the medieval period, with around 1,700 in England and Wales alone, and roughly 14,000 in German-speaking areas... Most of them rose between the 9th and 15th centuries after the collapse of centralized Roman authority and the rise of fragmented feudal power. As attacking armies grew more sophisticated, so did the walls meant to stop them. The cost was staggering: from 1179 to 1188, King Henry II of England spent over £6,500 on Dover Castle alone — an enormous sum given that his entire annual revenue was around £10,000. That figure was more than three times what he spent on any other building project in his reign, and more than four times what went into grand royal residences like Windsor. And then there is Malbork... Built by the Teutonic Knights in what is now Poland, Malbork is the largest castle in the world measured by land area. It covers 52 acres and once housed approximately 3,000 knights. A medieval visitor reportedly noted it seemed "more a city enclosed by walls than a single castle." In 950, Provence was home to just 12 castles. By 1000, the number had risen to 30. By 1030, it was over 100. The pace was not driven by a single empire with a plan, but by thousands of individual decisions made by lords, bishops, and kings who each decided, in their own time and place, that stone was the only reliable answer to an uncertain world... The word castle is derived from the Latin word castellum, which is a diminutive of the word castrum, meaning "fortified place". Between seventy-five thousand and a hundred thousand of these fortresses were built over six centuries as a reminder that every civilization eventually decides what it will leave behind. Europe decided on this. And the castles are still here.
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The castles of Europe are some of the most amazing things we’ve inherited from history Between 75,000 and 100,000 castles were built in Western Europe during the medieval period, with around 1,700 in England and Wales alone, and roughly 14,000 in German-speaking areas... Most of them rose between the 9th and 15th centuries after the collapse of centralized Roman authority and the rise of fragmented feudal power. As attacking armies grew more sophisticated, so did the walls meant to stop them. The cost was staggering: from 1179 to 1188, King Henry II of England spent over £6,500 on Dover Castle alone — an enormous sum given that his entire annual revenue was around £10,000. That figure was more than three times what he spent on any other building project in his reign, and more than four times what went into grand royal residences like Windsor. And then there is Malbork... Built by the Teutonic Knights in what is now Poland, Malbork is the largest castle in the world measured by land area. It covers 52 acres and once housed approximately 3,000 knights. A medieval visitor reportedly noted it seemed "more a city enclosed by walls than a single castle." In 950, Provence was home to just 12 castles. By 1000, the number had risen to 30. By 1030, it was over 100. The pace was not driven by a single empire with a plan, but by thousands of individual decisions made by lords, bishops, and kings who each decided, in their own time and place, that stone was the only reliable answer to an uncertain world... The word castle is derived from the Latin word castellum, which is a diminutive of the word castrum, meaning "fortified place". Between seventy-five thousand and a hundred thousand of these fortresses were built over six centuries as a reminder that every civilization eventually decides what it will leave behind. Europe decided on this. And the castles are still here.

James Lucas

1,921,888 views • 3 months ago

3 years ago Refik Anadol & Efsun, together with the royal family of the forest, the Yawanawa, dreamed of a project that could share the crossover of traditional indigenous art with futuristic pigments of AI. They dreamed of building a community to not only host their family, but also bring together their indigenous brothers and sisters from around the world. Aldeia Sagrada was reimagined. We 1OF1 are very honoured & deeply grateful that Refik Anadol & the Yawanawa family have chosen us to be the steward of their historic collaborative art work, the Winds of Yawanawa 1of1. Last week my family & I had the privilege to join Indigenous Nations from across the Amazon basin & around the world as they came together for a truly historic & deeply beautiful moment at the Indigenous Ayahuasca Conference in Acre, Brasil, where Indigenous leaders shared their ancient wisdom, beautiful art & wonderful energy with each other. As someone who has built infra in Brazil, I can confirm that what Refik Anadol and the Yawanawa family have built in Aldeia Sagrada is absolutely breathtaking & indescribable. The infrastructure & organization of their wonderful community is incredible. They have proven to the world a model for synergistic alliances between traditional Indigenous nations with new technologists, creatives and builders that can both massively support these native communities as well as celebrate the preservation of their way of life. I found myself overwhelmed with emotion at points throughout the week witnessing how amazing this place and these people are. It is with all of the lessons of 1OF1’s global tours in hand & our hearts filled with a deep sense of mission, that we commit to share this iconic work of art with the world in conversation with other works of Amazonian indigenous art. We promise to share the inspiring message of the Yawanawa across the globe through the power of art.
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3 years ago Refik Anadol & Efsun, together with the royal family of the forest, the Yawanawa, dreamed of a project that could share the crossover of traditional indigenous art with futuristic pigments of AI. They dreamed of building a community to not only host their family, but also bring together their indigenous brothers and sisters from around the world. Aldeia Sagrada was reimagined. We 1OF1 are very honoured & deeply grateful that Refik Anadol & the Yawanawa family have chosen us to be the steward of their historic collaborative art work, the Winds of Yawanawa 1of1. Last week my family & I had the privilege to join Indigenous Nations from across the Amazon basin & around the world as they came together for a truly historic & deeply beautiful moment at the Indigenous Ayahuasca Conference in Acre, Brasil, where Indigenous leaders shared their ancient wisdom, beautiful art & wonderful energy with each other. As someone who has built infra in Brazil, I can confirm that what Refik Anadol and the Yawanawa family have built in Aldeia Sagrada is absolutely breathtaking & indescribable. The infrastructure & organization of their wonderful community is incredible. They have proven to the world a model for synergistic alliances between traditional Indigenous nations with new technologists, creatives and builders that can both massively support these native communities as well as celebrate the preservation of their way of life. I found myself overwhelmed with emotion at points throughout the week witnessing how amazing this place and these people are. It is with all of the lessons of 1OF1’s global tours in hand & our hearts filled with a deep sense of mission, that we commit to share this iconic work of art with the world in conversation with other works of Amazonian indigenous art. We promise to share the inspiring message of the Yawanawa across the globe through the power of art.

Ryan Zurrer

12,145 views • 1 year ago

🇬🇷 There is a distinct, poetic charm that sets the Ionian island of Corfu entirely apart from the rest of Greece. While the Cyclades are famous for their barren landscapes and stark white walls, Corfu is a lush, emerald paradise shaped by centuries of Venetian, French, and British rule. It is a destination wrapped in a romantic magic that somehow keeps calling you back year after year, offering the perfect intersection of sophisticated European elegance, raw nature, and authentic Greek hospitality. To truly unlock the soul of the island, you need to immerse yourself in its diverse landscapes. Begin your journey inside the UNESCO-protected Corfu Town. Walking through its labyrinth of tall, pastel-hued apartment blocks and narrow stone alleys, known locally as kantounia, feels exactly like stepping into a hidden neighborhood in Venice or Naples. Once you have taken in the history, make your way northwest to the legendary shores of Paleokastritsa. This dramatic coastline features deep, jagged bays where dense pine forests tumble directly into impossibly clear, translucent turquoise waters that are perfect for afternoon boat excursions. As the day draws to a close, you have two spectacular options to watch the landscape transform. You can travel to the sheer vertical clay cliffs of Loggas Beach to watch the sun sink directly beneath the horizon line of the Ionian Sea. Alternatively, make the winding drive up to the mountain village of Pelekas to stand at Kaiser's Throne. Built as a personal retreat for Kaiser Wilhelm II, this panoramic lookout offers breathtaking, unobstructed views of the island's rolling olive groves and distant coastlines. Finally, no journey here is complete without diving deep into Corfu's unique culinary heritage. Because of its history, the local tavernas swap out standard Greek fare for iconic island comfort foods. Be sure to order a steaming clay bowl of pastitsada, tender meat braised in a rich, deeply spiced red-wine sauce served over thick Bucatini pasta or sample sofrito, an incredibly aromatic dish of tender veal simmered in an intense garlic, parsley, and white wine reduction. It is a culinary and sensory legacy that encapsulates a timeless way of life. 🎥 travelstoriesbyalexandra | IG
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🇬🇷 There is a distinct, poetic charm that sets the Ionian island of Corfu entirely apart from the rest of Greece. While the Cyclades are famous for their barren landscapes and stark white walls, Corfu is a lush, emerald paradise shaped by centuries of Venetian, French, and British rule. It is a destination wrapped in a romantic magic that somehow keeps calling you back year after year, offering the perfect intersection of sophisticated European elegance, raw nature, and authentic Greek hospitality. To truly unlock the soul of the island, you need to immerse yourself in its diverse landscapes. Begin your journey inside the UNESCO-protected Corfu Town. Walking through its labyrinth of tall, pastel-hued apartment blocks and narrow stone alleys, known locally as kantounia, feels exactly like stepping into a hidden neighborhood in Venice or Naples. Once you have taken in the history, make your way northwest to the legendary shores of Paleokastritsa. This dramatic coastline features deep, jagged bays where dense pine forests tumble directly into impossibly clear, translucent turquoise waters that are perfect for afternoon boat excursions. As the day draws to a close, you have two spectacular options to watch the landscape transform. You can travel to the sheer vertical clay cliffs of Loggas Beach to watch the sun sink directly beneath the horizon line of the Ionian Sea. Alternatively, make the winding drive up to the mountain village of Pelekas to stand at Kaiser's Throne. Built as a personal retreat for Kaiser Wilhelm II, this panoramic lookout offers breathtaking, unobstructed views of the island's rolling olive groves and distant coastlines. Finally, no journey here is complete without diving deep into Corfu's unique culinary heritage. Because of its history, the local tavernas swap out standard Greek fare for iconic island comfort foods. Be sure to order a steaming clay bowl of pastitsada, tender meat braised in a rich, deeply spiced red-wine sauce served over thick Bucatini pasta or sample sofrito, an incredibly aromatic dish of tender veal simmered in an intense garlic, parsley, and white wine reduction. It is a culinary and sensory legacy that encapsulates a timeless way of life. 🎥 travelstoriesbyalexandra | IG

𝕏 Travels, Hotels and Resorts

11,122 views • 1 month ago

At first glance, it just looks like a stunning painting. Then you step back and realize you’re looking at one of the most impossibly detailed works of art you’ve ever seen... Around 1620, in Antwerp, an unnamed Flemish painter set out to gather the city’s most famous artworks into a single piece, but what he ultimately chose to do with it will never cease to amaze me. Now held at the National Gallery in London, this painting is called Cognoscenti in a Room hung with Pictures, and it is, technically speaking, one of the most vertiginous acts of illusionism in the Western canon. Eleven richly dressed men — artists, dealers, collectors, the cognoscenti of the title — move through a vast imagined gallery, discussing and inspecting its contents. But the figures are almost beside the point. What stops you are the walls. From floor to ceiling, they are covered with meticulous miniature copies of real works by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century masters, mostly from Antwerp, assembled as an ideal gathering of the finest things the city had to offer. Paintings within a painting. A museum compressed into a canvas. This is what scholars call a Kunstkammer, or "cabinet of curiosities", and the genre carried real social weight. To collect art in the Dutch and Flemish Golden Age was a declaration, not merely a pleasure. The cognoscenti shown here are pretentious by design: richly dressed, surrounded by coins, medals, and Persian rugs. Every object is a signal of wealth. And then — almost invisible, sitting on the windowsill at the edge of the composition — there is the monkey. The picture celebrates the pleasures of collecting and the erudition of art appreciation. But the monkey, a traditional symbol of the foolishness of human endeavors, sits there as a reminder of the frivolity and ultimate futility of buying expensive things. He is mocking them... these men so devoted to hoarding precious objects, when perhaps their hours might have been spent on something less perishable. It is one of the most elegant acts of subversion in art history: a painter who spent months lovingly reproducing the work of other painters, in obsessive miniature detail, and then placed a fool's emblem in the corner to ask whether any of it matters... It is simultaneously a love letter to art and an indictment of what happens when love turns into possession. The cognoscenti in the room are not wrong to find beauty worth pursuing, but they have perhaps confused the pursuit with the trophy. Four hundred years later, the monkey is still watching and the question it asks has not changed: are you here for the beauty, or for the proof that the beauty is yours? -- -- -- I wrote about this and 5 other impossible masterpieces in today's article. You can read it here: If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.
0:18

At first glance, it just looks like a stunning painting. Then you step back and realize you’re looking at one of the most impossibly detailed works of art you’ve ever seen... Around 1620, in Antwerp, an unnamed Flemish painter set out to gather the city’s most famous artworks into a single piece, but what he ultimately chose to do with it will never cease to amaze me. Now held at the National Gallery in London, this painting is called Cognoscenti in a Room hung with Pictures, and it is, technically speaking, one of the most vertiginous acts of illusionism in the Western canon. Eleven richly dressed men — artists, dealers, collectors, the cognoscenti of the title — move through a vast imagined gallery, discussing and inspecting its contents. But the figures are almost beside the point. What stops you are the walls. From floor to ceiling, they are covered with meticulous miniature copies of real works by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century masters, mostly from Antwerp, assembled as an ideal gathering of the finest things the city had to offer. Paintings within a painting. A museum compressed into a canvas. This is what scholars call a Kunstkammer, or "cabinet of curiosities", and the genre carried real social weight. To collect art in the Dutch and Flemish Golden Age was a declaration, not merely a pleasure. The cognoscenti shown here are pretentious by design: richly dressed, surrounded by coins, medals, and Persian rugs. Every object is a signal of wealth. And then — almost invisible, sitting on the windowsill at the edge of the composition — there is the monkey. The picture celebrates the pleasures of collecting and the erudition of art appreciation. But the monkey, a traditional symbol of the foolishness of human endeavors, sits there as a reminder of the frivolity and ultimate futility of buying expensive things. He is mocking them... these men so devoted to hoarding precious objects, when perhaps their hours might have been spent on something less perishable. It is one of the most elegant acts of subversion in art history: a painter who spent months lovingly reproducing the work of other painters, in obsessive miniature detail, and then placed a fool's emblem in the corner to ask whether any of it matters... It is simultaneously a love letter to art and an indictment of what happens when love turns into possession. The cognoscenti in the room are not wrong to find beauty worth pursuing, but they have perhaps confused the pursuit with the trophy. Four hundred years later, the monkey is still watching and the question it asks has not changed: are you here for the beauty, or for the proof that the beauty is yours? -- -- -- I wrote about this and 5 other impossible masterpieces in today's article. You can read it here: If you'd like to support my work, a paid subscription is what makes it possible.

James Lucas

31,107 views • 2 months ago

My friend Abdi Mohamud had mentioned an urgent matter which is the misappropriation of Somali culture under the “East African “ banner: Somali culture is rich, vibrant, and distinct, with unique traditions ranging from the elegant Dirac dress to the lively baati parties and flavorful cuisine. However, there has been a growing trend of cultural appropriation where certain individuals and groups, particularly from neighboring East African countries like Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Burundi, claim Somali cultural elements as part of a vague “East African” identity. This practice not only erases Somali heritage but also misattributes iconic Somali traditions, such as the Dirac and Alindi clothing, to unrelated cultures like those of the Arab world or India, despite these regions not wearing such garments in their traditional contexts. The Dirac, a flowing, colorful dress adorned by Somali women for special occasions, is a hallmark of Somali identity. Similarly, the Alindi, a traditional clothing, carries deep cultural significance. Yet, these garments are often mislabeled as “Arab” or “Indian” by those seeking to dilute their Somali origins. While Arab and Indian cultures have their own distinct clothing styles, they do not include the Dirac or Alindi, making such attributions inaccurate and dismissive of Somali craftsmanship and heritage. Somali cuisine, with its aromatic spices, unique dishes, and communal dining traditions, is another target of appropriation. Under the broad label of “East African cuisine,” Somali culinary contributions are often lumped together with those of other nations, ignoring their distinct preparation methods and cultural significance. This generalization strips away the specificity of Somali foodways, which are deeply tied to the nomadic and coastal heritage of the Somali people. Perhaps most striking is the hypocrisy in this cultural dynamic. Countries like Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Burundi rarely, if ever, share their own cultural practices with Somalis or acknowledge Somali influence in their traditions. Yet, they freely claim Somali cultural elements under the convenient umbrella of “East African” identity. This one-sided appropriation disregards the unique history, language, and traditions of the Somali people, who have maintained a distinct cultural identity despite regional proximity. This misappropriation is not just a misunderstanding but an act of erasure. By labeling Somali culture as broadly “East African” or attributing its elements to unrelated regions, the unique contributions of the Somali people are diminished. It’s time to recognize and respect Somali culture for what it is a vibrant, standalone heritage that deserves to be celebrated on its own terms, not subsumed under inaccurate or opportunistic labels.
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My friend Abdi Mohamud had mentioned an urgent matter which is the misappropriation of Somali culture under the “East African “ banner: Somali culture is rich, vibrant, and distinct, with unique traditions ranging from the elegant Dirac dress to the lively baati parties and flavorful cuisine. However, there has been a growing trend of cultural appropriation where certain individuals and groups, particularly from neighboring East African countries like Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Burundi, claim Somali cultural elements as part of a vague “East African” identity. This practice not only erases Somali heritage but also misattributes iconic Somali traditions, such as the Dirac and Alindi clothing, to unrelated cultures like those of the Arab world or India, despite these regions not wearing such garments in their traditional contexts. The Dirac, a flowing, colorful dress adorned by Somali women for special occasions, is a hallmark of Somali identity. Similarly, the Alindi, a traditional clothing, carries deep cultural significance. Yet, these garments are often mislabeled as “Arab” or “Indian” by those seeking to dilute their Somali origins. While Arab and Indian cultures have their own distinct clothing styles, they do not include the Dirac or Alindi, making such attributions inaccurate and dismissive of Somali craftsmanship and heritage. Somali cuisine, with its aromatic spices, unique dishes, and communal dining traditions, is another target of appropriation. Under the broad label of “East African cuisine,” Somali culinary contributions are often lumped together with those of other nations, ignoring their distinct preparation methods and cultural significance. This generalization strips away the specificity of Somali foodways, which are deeply tied to the nomadic and coastal heritage of the Somali people. Perhaps most striking is the hypocrisy in this cultural dynamic. Countries like Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Burundi rarely, if ever, share their own cultural practices with Somalis or acknowledge Somali influence in their traditions. Yet, they freely claim Somali cultural elements under the convenient umbrella of “East African” identity. This one-sided appropriation disregards the unique history, language, and traditions of the Somali people, who have maintained a distinct cultural identity despite regional proximity. This misappropriation is not just a misunderstanding but an act of erasure. By labeling Somali culture as broadly “East African” or attributing its elements to unrelated regions, the unique contributions of the Somali people are diminished. It’s time to recognize and respect Somali culture for what it is a vibrant, standalone heritage that deserves to be celebrated on its own terms, not subsumed under inaccurate or opportunistic labels.

Abla عبلة

33,614 views • 1 year ago