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Oh Romeo, Romeo, wherefore are thou Romeo? Who doesn’t know these heartfelt, love-filled words and the person who spoke them? It’s Juliet, of course, perhaps the most well known of all Shakespearian heroines, unfortunate lover and misunderstood child.  Her relationship …

I think I must use the word parecchio (pah-rai-keeoh) at least a dozen times every day and, like me, every Italian does. Parecchio means “a lot,” “in large quantity,” “very” and can be used in all contexts you can think …

In the outskirts of Capannori, a quaint village in the Tuscan countryside not far from Lucca, in the beautiful park surrounding Villa Carrara, there is a 600 years old oak, so famous and so distinctive that it is officially recognized …

Pasticcio (pah-stee-tchoh) comes from the vulgar Latin pasticium, in turn related to another late Latin word we know much better, pasta. It is attested in our beautiful language for the first time in 1525, a tad too late for our …

It doesn’t matter if you’re from the North or the South: a colomba will find its way on your Easter table. This sweet and fragrant “lievitato” is very reminiscent of another traditional Italian cake, panettone, and there are plenty of …

Italians often use the word mannaggia (mahn-nadj-dja) instead of others they think more offensive. It usually expresses annoyance or spite and can sometimes come in association with other words to create colorful sayings, such as mannaggia la miseria!, which we …

Mozzafiato (moh-tsa-feeah-toh) means “breathtaking,” but it’s a bit more gory. While, in English, something that surprises or emotions you “takes your breath away,” in Italian it cuts it off your lungs. Because that’s what mozzafiato literally means! The verb mozzare, …

Jakob Philipp  Hackert (1737-1807) non ha bisogno di presentazioni nel contesto dei massimi artisti pittori europei del 1700. Nel 1793 intraprese un lungo viaggio nell’Abruzzo dell’epoca, provincia del Regno di Napoli, e più esattamente nel cosiddetto Abruzzo Ulteriore II tra …

We call them coriandoli, the rest of the world calls them “confetti,” but they are the same thing: those little colorful paper disks that cheerfully fill the air and the streets at Carnevale time in Italy, and in every festive …

Sfogliatella (sfoh-lleeah-tehl-lah) sounds as sweet as it taste. The word is the diminutive of sfogliata (a type of cake), which in turn comes from sfoglia, the Italian for puff pastry. Sfoglia means “thin layer,” as the pastry is made with …