Bologna is a magnificent city, with an overwhelming number of sites to see, and you could easily miss the small Museo Civico Medievale, off the main street from the Basilica of San Pietro. But if you go there, you'll find a rare, perhaps unique, collection of funerary monuments, and if you're a special kind of geek, you'll appreciate how very different they are from the ones you'll typically find in large and famous museums in Europe. Famous sarcophagi and funeral monuments are usually...

Siren Aquamanile, Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, circa 1230 Maybe it was the dramatic staging, but this piece changed my narrow mind about a whole genre of medieval art that previously I had just passed by with a shrug of the shoulders as I moved on to shinier objects. At the Kupferstichkabinett, or the Museum of Prints and Drawings in Berlin, there is a a large room of medieval treasures, all products of what is now called Germany and Austria. The item above is an aquamanile: a pitcher,...

The funerary monument for Christopher Columbus stands in the south transept of the Seville Cathedral, Apart from a coating of dust, it looks startlingly lifelike; as though four 16th century heralds of thte rulers of Spain are waiting only for a flourish of trumpets to prompt them to carry toward the altar the coffin of the man to whom the Crown had bestowed the titles admiral, viceroy, and governor. The monument is a tomb, however, and after decades of multiple studies and a few genetic...