The exhibit “Leonardo da Vinci, The Universal Man” will be at Venice’s Accademia, which owns 30 Leonardo works. It will bring together 27 other Leonardo masterpieces from various European museums such as the Uffizi, the National Gallery of Parma, the British Museum, and the Louvre. The iconic “Vetruvian Man” will be one of many highlights….
The prevailing travel wisdom about Italy has always been to avoid going to the country in August. “Don’t go to Italy in August!” they say, because it’s hot, many shops and restaurants are closed, and the cities are emptied out of residents and replaced by other tourists. All of this is quite true. But if…
This is what happens when you have writer’s block and you are supposed to write about Italy.
In the late winter/early spring of 1948, American playwright Tennessee Williams arrived in Rome in need of a change of scenery. Williams, of course, is known for his writing set in the American South, including “A Streetcar Named Desire” (written in 1947) and “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” (1955), both of which earned him Pulitzer…
Rome is a city of many hills. But the seven hills of Rome are the original hills on which the ancient city was founded.
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…
One of the biggest cliches – and truths – you will hear from travelers is how the best part of visiting a place is the people. Although tourists have been saying that for decades, it wasn’t until recently that portraits of people in the city in which they live became just as popular as images…
Earthquakes can strike nearly anywhere in Italy. Learn more about seismic activity in Italy, from historic quakes to earthquake monitoring resources.
About an hour and a half south of Rome lies Montecassino, an enormous Benedictine monastery whose environs witnessed a very costly battle of World War II.
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…
A short primer on a few of the dates you will encounter while meandering the streets and squares of Italy.
Calling Italian playwright Dario Fo a “Renaissance” man would probably irk him given his long history of questioning authority and mocking the status quo. But Fo, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997 (one of six Italians to have won the literature prize) proves he is worthy of this nickname with the new…
It has been said (too many times) that all roads lead to Rome. But did you know that you could trace botanical medicine and even the environmental movement to 16th century Italy? It was here in the city of Pisa (1544) then Padua (1545) that the world’s first botanical gardens were set up. This month’s…
Over the past weekend, Rome got pelted with eight inches of snow, the largest single snowfall in the capital since 1986. The rare snowfall prompted the closure of the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Palatine Hill, and other tourist attractions. Many businesses had to close because workers were unable to access public transportation or get their…
Marble, either as a substance or a style, runs through three different artisan crafts that are famous in Italy.
When my colleagues in the Italy Blogging Roundtable and I decided to write on the topic “gifts” for our December post, I knew exactly what I wanted to write about. I knew straight away that I didn’t want to write about Italian gifts you can buy in a store, though there are many I desire…
Many of you will know that, since May 2011, five of us have been writing a monthly post on a given topic and we call it the Italy Blogging Roundtable. Each month we decide the topic in advance and the only rule is that it has to be connected to Italy; the posts are published…
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…