There are 20 regions in Italy
To ring in the New Year, my family and I rented a farmhouse for a few days on the outskirts of Ferrara. Thinking back to the trip, the timing wasn’t ideal. Ferrara was freezing and on New Year’s Eve, the fog was so thick on our drive into town to watch the fireworks over Castello…
Saint Valentine, a Christian bishop from Umbria, was martyred in Rome in the 3rd century AD. Learn more about his life, death, and legend.
Congratulations to the city of Palermo, which has been awarded the distinction of Italian Capital of Culture for 2018. The Italian Culture Ministry (Ministero di Beni Culturali) awards the prize each year in an effort to promote tourism. Along with the distinction, the winning city receives 1 million euro which is to be used to…
Wine lovers have a fun new reason to make a trip to Abruzzo.
The town of San Leo in Emilia-Romagna is known for its Renaissance era fort and torture chamber.
In 1499, Tuscan artist Luca Signorelli signed a contract to paint two remaining sections of the Cappella Nuova (new chapel) of the Duomo in the Umbrian town of Orvieto. By 1502 (or 1504, depending on which documentation you read), he had completed his “End of the World” fresco cycle in what is now known as the…
It’s been called the “shame of Italy” and for good reason. The A3 autostrada, a 443km highway that is to connect Salerno to Reggio Calabria, has been under construction since 1966. Faulty construction and mafia meddling by both the Camorra and ‘Ndragheta factions have caused numerous delays during the nearly 50 years since the project…
Emilia-Romagna’s Shit Museum explores man’s relationship to manure.
An Italian Army tale from 1960 set in a train chugging through Sardinia.
Inspiration always seems to find me when I’m not looking and that is exactly what happened as I settled in to watch a few minutes of television last night. Lucky for me, I clicked over to Kenny Mayne’s Wider World of Sports, a show on ESPN that puts sports into a cultural context. One of…
The latest reports about the earthquake that hit Emilia-Romagna this weekend state that at least seven people were killed, 50 injured, and more than 13,000 have been displaced. The 6.0 earthquake struck early Sunday morning north of the city of Bologna in the town of Finale Emilia. According to The Guardian, the quake “wrought havoc…
Bad experiences can happen in Italy. You may lose your wallet, have to deal with a brusque waiter, or turn your ankle while walking on a cobbled path. Despite unfortunate circumstances, it seems like everyone I have ever talked to who has visited Italy thinks of it the way that Matthew Brown does: Italy as…
Cooking school teacher and chef Angela Schiavina shows off the culinary riches of Ravenna in this “My City” video from The Guardian.
On Tuesday, the Museo Archeologico di Morgantina, a small archeological museum in Aidone (Enna), Sicily, held an inauguration for the repatriation of an ancient sculpture of Aphrodite.
The brave work of the anti-mafia organization AddioPizzo.org was recently brought to my attention. “Addio Pizzo” means “Goodbye, Pizzo,” the latter word meaning the protection money that hundreds of businesses throughout Sicily have had to pay to the powerful, omnipresent mafia. AddioPizzo was formed in 2004 after a group of young Sicilian entrepreneurs, afraid that…
To many a traveler, Tuscany and art are synonymous. From the architecture to the numerous galleries to those gorgeous, green, and cliché hills, there’s an element of art in every corner of Tuscany.
In the heart of Sardinia lies the village of Orgosolo, a sort of Sardinian “Wild West” known for years for its bandits, who would conduct brazen kidnappings and murders. During the first half of the 20th century, Orgosolo’s notorious reputation grew to such a point that it inspired the film Bandits of Orgosolo (1961). While…
With more than 500 miles of coastline, wrapping around seaside villages and swooping cliffs, Calabria is packed with beaches in every shape, size, and color.