Getting the flavor of ... A hidden cultural enclave, and more

last updated 8 January 2015

A hidden cultural enclave

Pacific Palisades, an enclave tucked into California’s winding canyons and hills between Malibu and Santa Monica, is “the valley that time forgot,” said Finn-Olaf Jones in the Los Angeles Times. Founded in 1922 as a Methodist retreat, the village does not contain a single hotel, despite three extraordinary attractions. Sitting on the inland side of the village is the Will Rogers Ranch House—a “Western-art-and-antlers-filled 31-room compound” that recently underwent a $5 million renovation. The Getty Villa, on the Pacific side, is a sprawling reproduction of a Roman nobleman’s home, brimming with Greek, Roman, and Etruscan masterpieces. Then there is the Villa Aurora, a Spanish-style colonial home once owned by German expatriates and known locally as “Weimar by the Sea.” It hosted several notable exiles during World War II, including Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and the filmmaker Fritz Lang. It is now a cultural center offering readings, concerts, and screenings.

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Battlefield sites scattered throughout the Virginia Peninsula tell the story of warfare on American soil, said Jesse Leavenworth in The Hartford Courant. A good starting point is Fort Monroe, “an almost-200-year-old bastion on a spit” of land overlooking the Hampton Roads water hub. It was from here, in March 1862, that Gen. George B. McClellan launched an assault on the Confederate capital of Richmond with 100,000 Union troops. The moated fort is still an active U.S. Army base, and the Casemate Museum within “includes displays on artillery, historic artifacts, and a jail cell” once occupied by Jefferson Davis. A few miles west, in Newport News, is the Mariners’ Museum, which features a full-size replica of the ironclad Confederate warship Virginia (formerly the Merrimack). Although the original sank in 1862, the turrets, guns, and main engine were later salvaged. Yorktown, north of Newport News, is “where the British surrendered to end the Revolutionary War in 1781.”