Free Republic

O n the surface, Oppenheim looks like your typical German town resting along the banks of the Rhine River. But there's more to Oppenheim than beer halls and a Gothic-style cathedral from the Middle Ages. Beneath its narrow cobblestone streets lies something deeper—an entire labyrinth of tunnels and cellars. “The town is practically honeycombed with cavities,” Wilfried Hilpke, a tour guide with Oppenheim’s tourism office, tells Smithsonian.com. Hilpke should know. For the past ten years, he’s spent much of his time leading hour-long hardhat tours of Oppenheim’s elaborate tunnel system, taking visitors through a journey that covers just a fraction...

As the sixth class in this mini-art appreciation set of lectures, it’s time to consider Dada and Surrealism. The roots for this movement of art fantasy goes back to Henri Rousseau and de Chirico in the late 19th and first decades of the 20th century. These unusual, dream-like settings provoke our imagination more than the emotion of Expressionism and the intellectual structure of Cubism. Henri Rousseau Sleeping Gypsy and de Chirico Mystery and Melancholy of a Street Note in the street images, how the long shadows create a mysterious, imminent mood, and that the “girl” is only a shadow of...