chiara dalessio

Filigree is magic: gold or silver threads, twisted together to create ephemeral shapes and delicate patterns. There is something so incredibly alluring in filigree jewelry, perhaps because it is such an  ancient tradition and one so strongly tied to our peninsula, …

Naming her brings to mind a time of conspiracies, cloak-and-dagger events, and lascivious, decadent orgies of sex and wealth. But was Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI and his favorite, Vannozza Cattanei, truly such a dissolute being? According to historians …

In the rest of the country is al bar per l’aperitivo, but in Venezia, you go to the bàcaro for cicchetti. If you’re not familiar with them, you’re forgiven: neither was I until an old friend from Veneto, back in the days when I was …

Sardinia, along with other areas of Italy such as Cilento (Campania), is a place with reaching 100 is not that unusual, and it is especially so in Perdasdefogu, in the province of Nuoro, a village of just over 1,700 that recently …

It’s difficult to say no to a piece of candy. Or two, if you have a sweet tooth. And while today’s globalized world means that a lot of the sweet treats we eat in Italy are the same you have …

Margherita, a name truly fit for a queen. In English, it translates to “daisy,” the simplest but most popular flower. In the kitchen, it’s the name of the queen of pizzas, the pizza Margherita. Before the pizza and, back in her days, …

If you’ve ever been to an Italian old-men bar, the one where your granddad would go spend the afternoon with his mates if that’s the type of thing he is into, or if you had the curse – or blessing, depending on …

After two years of almost continuous lockdown and the impossibility to travel, it’s finally time to return to some of our old, beloved habits. It’s finally time to come back to Italy!  Have you ever thought about what you’d really like …

What a movie, Casablanca. The cinematography, the aesthetics, the music, the actors, of course. Who doesn’t have in mind Humphrey Bogart, dark and handsome, with his fedora hat and trench coat, in the famous airport scene where he says goodbye to Ilsa, interpreted …

As a former – and long-time – resident of the British Isles, I like reading Irish and English newspapers. During the first, 2020 Covid-19 lockdown I forked out for two subscriptions, one for Dublin’s Irish Times and one for London’s Daily Telegraph: both …