History

If you’re looking for a journey that feels like stepping into a secret woolgather of queer history, Oscar Wilde Tours’ “LGBTQ+ England, from Edward II to Ian McKellen” is pure magic—and made just for us. Imagine nine days in England guided by people who actually get how queer culture is woven into the tapestry of...Read More

In what culture did the king of the gods, the greatest heroes, and the greatest general all have boyfriends?  Ancient Greece, of course.  Many cultures have viewed same-sex relations more positively than America traditionally did—but no-one tops the ancient Greeks.  Male-male relations occupied a key role in their culture:  they were thought of as the way that young men...Read More

People think of Paris as a romantic city, but what they don’t always realize is that it has a long history as a specifically LGBTQ+ city.  First of all, France made homosexuality *legal* in 1791:  all sodomy laws were eliminated from the law code during the Revolution, 212 years before the Supreme Court did that in the...Read More

Penises in art are a bigger theme than you might think.  After all, what is the number one question people ask in the Greek and Roman collection of any museum?  There is no competition:  why the penises in Classical art are smaller than real-life average adult penises.  And the second is:  whether Christians really broke...Read More

Over the last few years, several museums in Europe have organized an LGBT trail, i.e. a self-guided trail following LGBT themes through the museums’ collections.  The British Museum and the Prado are both prominent examples.  No museum in the US has ever put together such a trail until now, when the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford...Read More

Gay men have always been part of the American military. In an era before gay marriage or open pride, military men fell in love, formed passionate friendships and had same-sex encounters same-sex encounters. Due to social and official discrimination, though, most of their stories have gone untold. But in the case of one of the...Read More

Here is an interesting article about gay history in Tangier.  Oscar Wilde Tours would love to organize a tour to southern Spain and Morocco in 2017.  Southern Spain has a fascinatingly complex history, including a lot of gay history.  Rome’s gayest emperor, Hadrian (whose male lover Antinous appears in museums in New York, London, Paris, Rome,...Read More

While I was in Greece researching Oscar Wilde Tour’s 2016 Greece tour, I was following a great story from gay history: the story of the ancient Athenians’ favorite heroes—right up there with Theseus, the city’s mythical founder— Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the male-male couple who assassinated the brother of the last tyrant of Athens and whom...Read More

“Why the green carnation?” That’s a question we get regularly asked at Oscar Wilde Tours. And it’s one we love to answer, because it tells so much about us— Oscar Wilde.Read More