La vita italiana

Used since ancient times for cooking, cosmetics and curative properties, saffron is the wonderfully aromatic queen of spices. The Greeks used it to fight toothache whilst the Romans used it in fish sauce recipes. And since the 1200s Italians have …

The event Tu Vuò fa’ il Napoletano – Facce da Pizza landed in the USA. The first of the three gatherings in support to the candidature of the Neapolitan pizza making art to UNESCO’s Intangible World Heritage, took place in …

Stereotypes: there’s always a bit of truth in every one of them, positive or negative, and those about Italy are plenty: Italians are loud, Italians can’t stand in a queue, Italians always stick with one another, Italians always think about …

There is a place in southern Tuscany, just near the border with the Lazio region, to which vacationers, as well as art historians and culture lovers from all over the world, have long been attracted: its name is Porto Ercole. …

Wander the back streets of Murano and you can hear the roar of furnaces behind blind factory walls. The air trembles and there’s a perpetual orange glow in the high clerestory windows that remain just out of reach. It is …

In the US, the national debate on the country’s origins and heritage has involved also the Italian American community. At the heart of discussion, however, there is more than statues and celebratory days, there is the meaning itself of being …

After our visits to Dante Alighieri’s native Florence and Francesco Petrarca’s hometown of Arezzo, the journey to discover the origins of la bella lingua would not be complete without one more stop in the very heart of Tuscany: this time …

Rome’s Spanish Steps are famous around the globe. As too are Venice’s stepped bridges crossing her countless canals. And the Vatican Museum’s Bramante spiral stairway is one of the most photographed in the world. But Italy is also home to …

No! Not another article about Italy and pasta, I hear you crying. Worry not, this time we’re going to tackle the “pasta issue” from an entirely different angle. Many angles in fact, as we’ll find out some little known historical, …

Ironically enough, musical genius Frank Zappa and a 13th century poet, Cielo d’Alcamo, had some important things in common. These artists so vastly disparate in time and space share an iconoclastic spirit and the colors of two neighboring cities in northwest Sicily. The …