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Qualora (Kooah-loh-rah) is a bit of a fancy word because we don’t use it every day. Qualora is more of a “written Italian” thing or something you’d use in the spoken language only in higher, more formal registers. But that doesn’t mean we …

Love it or not, television is an integrant part of both our culture and our everyday life. Back in the 1950s, many Italians learned their national language for the first time thanks to televised evening classes, and it is through …

Good coffee is just like a cuddle: it’s heart-warming, reassuring and bound to cheer you up. And if there is something that Italy and the US have in common, is their love for a quality cup of coffee. It shouldn’t surprise, …

The Italian word circa (cheer-kah) is not unfamiliar to English-speaking folks: we use it with dates to indicate something happened around the time we mention. In Italian, it has the same meaning, but with a couple more nuances. Of course, the circa we like in English …

Literally, a caffè sospeso is a “pending” or “suspended” coffee … but what does it mean and what’s the story behind this habit popular in Naples and, today, also here and there in other parts of the country? First things first, let’s …

Kissing is the ultimate sign of affection and, if you live in some parts of Europe, not only between lovers or family members. We are all familiar with the image of our Italian friends and relatives air-kissing one another’s cheeks …

Chiodo is the Italian word for “nail.” While historians and archaeologists believe the first nail-like tools were used by the Homo Sapiens and the great Egyptians knew them, too, the first archaeology-attested signs of their use belong to Roman times and it was them, our …

We Italians love playing cards, but our decks must be quality ones!  Modiano is a brand of our Made in Italy known around the world for the beauty and quality of its playing cards, so much so that, since 2015, it officially supplies the …

Oratino is a quaint little village in the province of Campobasso, Molise. With its 1,450 inhabitants, of which only about 200 live within the old borough, Oratino well embodies the image many of us have of the “traditional Italian hamlet” we learned …

Calabria is known for the beauty of its landscape, its food and for its historical connections with Ancient Greece. The region was one of the richest colonies of Magna Graecia,_° and Hellenic culture is still deeply entrenched in some areas, …