Heritage

What’s the first thing that comes to  your mind when you think of Italians? They dress well: yeah, sure. They know how to cook! True, true.  They are passionate: there we go, we’re getting close to the point. Imagine — …

Who says that good food must be complicated to make, or  that it has to take loads of time to prepare? There is a lot to learn from the way our grandmothers used to cook: it may  have  been a …

Sicily: cradle of beauty and  fertile, golden triangle the world and the gods has envied us since the  beginning of times. Only region the mighty Greeks, the Fathers of Western Culture and inhabitants of one of the most blessed lands …

At the foot of Rome’s Capitoline Hill, by the staircase leading to the Piazza del Campidoglio, seat of the city government since the Middle Ages, a statue of a hooded man waving a sword commemorates a crime. On this spot …

What does being — or better, feeling — and identifying as Italians mean,  when living outside of Italy? What is Italy, for all those born from migrant parents, people who left il Belpaese and crossed the ocean to find a …

This past 4th of July, the US Embassy in Rome celebrated the 244th Independence Day anniversary unusually. It didn’t only move all celebrations online — because of the pandemic and the consequent ban on gatherings — but it also decided …

You are certainly familiar with it, the curnicello, or cornetto, that red chili pepper Neapolitans use to attract good luck and be protected by evil forces, or malocchio, as they call it. Found often on market stalls,  it has become …

In a small corner of Lunigiana, in the extreme north-western tip of Tuscany, lies a remarkable story bound up with the founding of a Wild West town in America. An area of outstanding natural beauty bordering the Apennines on the …

Every chocaholic knows that Italy has three capitals when it comes to cioccolato: Turin, Perugia, Modica. Trying to pick an absolute queen would be useless and even damaging,  for there is no reason to have a favorite: three is such  …

When we think of Italian immigration to the US,  our thoughts immediately go to the sunny shores and hills of Southern Italy and we’re not making a mistake, really: of the 9 million people who arrived to America from the  …