chiara dalessio

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 …

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 …

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 …

“Sweetie, where are you going on that bike?” If you like oldies made in Italy, you are probably familiar with the refrain from the 1951’s eponymous song, Bellezza in Bicicletta – incidentally, an interesting story, that of this song, but …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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, …

Finally, you can travel to Italy when and how you want. Covid-19 times seem to be over, at least when it comes to restrictions. At the same time, things are not quite the way they used to be when it comes to tourism.  …

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 …