Across the road from Milan's monument-laden cemetery, it's 10 minutes' walk from the glamorous Corso Como but the edgy, downtown location makes it feel like another country. Until 28 February, you can see video installations by prize-winning Dutch and Flemish students, plus installations by two young Milanese artists. Another exhibition, Inhabituel, until 6 March, displays works on the theme of artist as nomad, by 25 Milanese students drawing on their experiences in residence at an arts foundation in Paris.La Fabbrica del Vapore, via Procaccini 4, (00 39 02 33 15 800; delvapore ), Tues-Sat, admission free 10. It's got the lot A lounge bar, restaurant, nightclub and theatre all rolled into one, the chameleon tendencies of TH have been wooing a cosmopolitan crowd ever since it opened in September. The latest venture of the boutique hotel Town House 31, the venue owes its eyecatching look to the Argentinian designer Claudio Montias, who has blended Art Deco style with vintage fabrics and eccentricities such as a crystal and feather chandelier from Miami. While diners tuck into the classic Mediterranean menu - the signature dish is pasta with lobster - the evening's spectacle unrolls around them.
Performers range from tango dancers to ballad singers and street artists. After the show, guests dance to an eclectic mix of R&B and house, depending on which DJ is spinning the decks that night Book in advance.TH, via de Amicis 28, (00 39 02 80 54 140) Lunch and dinner, Tues-Sun.. 'There's something wonderful about being on the edge of things," says Gilly Wyatt-Smith, owner of The Yew Tree Gallery in Penwith, the area of Cornwall which hosts the last stretch of England before it drops away into the Atlantic. "It's so momentous, coming over the moors from Penzance and taking the coast road to St Ives, to see the edge of the country and beyond, thousands of miles of sea.
It gets to the imagination." 'There's something wonderful about being on the edge of things," says Gilly Wyatt-Smith, owner of The Yew Tree Gallery in Penwith, the area of Cornwall which hosts the last stretch of England before it drops away into the Atlantic. It gets to the imagination." The imagination of two formidable writers was similarly fired by Penwith. D H Lawrence lived for a while in the enchanting village of Zennor, some six miles along narrow lanes from The Yew Tree, and Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse was inspired by family holidays in St Ives.But what I was really looking for was art - or, perhaps more accurately, its source. I wanted to see what had inspired generations of artists, from Whistler and Sickert in the late 19th century through to the legendary post-war "St Ives School" usually associated with the sculptor Barbara Hepworth and her artist husband Ben Nicholson. So many other renowned artists had made their homes in Penwith - Wilhemina Barns-Graham, Terry Frost, Patrick Heron, John Wells and Bryan Winter, to name a few. What had touched them so deeply?I opted to stay in the village of Pendeen given its relatively central position in Penwith. From there, sorties could be made to the moors and beaches and to the centre of the Cornwall art scene, St Ives.
