Heritage

Shakespeare’s famous “Fair Verona” may have been the ideal setting for his story about the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, but modern Verona has become a city with a wonderful mixture of those historic elements and contemporary Italian culture. It …

Even though Dante Alighieri lived more than a century and a half before the Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, the two of them seem to be linked by some kind of mysterious connection. The famed painter of such masterpieces as The …

From scarlet undies to pig’s trotters, fireworks to fearless bridge divers or tombola to fat ox parades, Italians love to celebrate the New Year with some wonderful traditions. It’s all to help usher in good luck and a good year. …

Next year promises to be big for Pistoia. This little-known town in the north of Tuscany has just been chosen as the Italian Capital of Culture for 2017. And as the world’s press turn their spotlights on the town, we …

The second landmark in our tour of the “houses of the House of Medici” in Florence is the one and only Palazzo Vecchio (Old Palace). Built around the year 1300 as Palazzo dei Priori (Priors’ Palace), the worldwide-known building overlooking …

Technology represents today a powerful tool for challenging the political nature of the chronicles of the past, the one we learn as truth at school. The history of “old Europe” is something that it is usually taken for granted. Unless …

Walk through Trastevere or along the Tiber River in Rome, explore the labyrinthine Cannaregio district of Venice or stroll down Viale Montegrappa in Reggio Emilia and you’ll spot something they all have in common; little brass cobblestones set into the …

A Christmas without panettone is barely a Christmas in Italy: loathed or loved, the Milanese born sweet loaf is something everyone has in the kitchen this time of  the year. Light, fragrant and pleasantly rich, panettone lovers relish its candied …

Medici, Masters of Florence has recently made an appearance on television. Like everyone with an interest in Italy I couldn’t wait to see it. And when I did I wasn’t disappointed. Scheming aristocrats. Renaissance backdrops. Italian passion. What’s not to …

But what he had not anticipated nor planned for was the addition of an assistant. And a girl at that. Miss Waldine Tauch of Brady, from Texas, was a remarkably talented young girl of 18 years, beautiful and ambitious, yet …