Master Baroque artist Caravaggio used a "camera obscura" among other techniques to trace the models in his paintings. According to a Florentine researcher, Caravaggio made use of a dark room, first described by Leonardo da Vinci, and was able to fix the outline of his subjects in order to paint ...

Farewell to Christopher Hibbert, whose biographies of Rome and the Medici family established him as one of the foremost authorities on Italy's history.

I am supremely excited about two new nonfiction books this summer: The Monster of Florence and Rome 1960. Both books describe tumultuous times in central Italy. The first is a period of time in Florence when an unknown predator (or predators) "stalked lovers' lanes in the countryside." The ...

Salman Rushdie imagines Renaissance Florence in his new book "The Enchantress of Florence."

We recently profiled the Civilized Shopper's Guides to Rome and Florence, two handy shopping guides for two of Italy's most popular cities. Landing on bookshelves this week is the second edition of Made in Italy: A Shopper's Guide to Italy's Best Artisanal Traditions from Murano Glass to ...

  It's one thing to go to Italy and bring back photos, cheap souvenirs, and designer clothing that you could have bought at just about any department store or outlet. It's quite another to bring back items that Italy is known for - quality leather, handmade paper, artisan chocolate, etc. That's ...

Just in time for late spring and summer romps around Italy comes the reissue of Edith Wharton's 1904 landscaping classic Italian Villas and Their Gardens. According to curators with the New York Society Library's Green Art collection, "Wharton visited some fifty villas around Rome, ...

In case you missed it yesterday, WAMU-NPR's Diane Rehm hosted a one-hour book talk on The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. If you need a refresher on this classic, want to hear new perspectives, or simply are interested in learning more about this "classic treatise on leadership and power," ...

You can blame my postman for me being a little slow on reporting about the excellent Rome-related book reviews in the October 11th issue of the New York Review of Books. When I happened upon Ingrid Rowland's review of four books - Rome from the Ground Up; The Seven Hills of Rome: A Geographical ...

Affreschi: Exploring Etruria is the only travel book I know that focuses on the land of the Etruscans, also known as Etruria. Before the Romans came along, the Etruscans ruled a wide domain, which stretched from Rome to southern Tuscany and east to Umbria. Author Mary Jane Cryan profiles these ...