Culture

If you’ve ever been to an Italian old-men bar, the one where your granddad would go spend the afternoon with his mates if that’s the type of thing he is into, or if you had the curse – or blessing, depending on …

The history of our Made in Italy is long and many businesses and families have contributed to it. Since 2000 there is an association, the Unione Imprese Centenarie Italiane, that brings them together as “expressions of tradition rooted in our territory …

For Catholics, Easter is the most important celebration of the year. Yes, even more important than Christmas. In it, we remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is considered by the faithful the ultimate proof of His divine nature. While Italians, just …

Not many are familiar with the name Norba,  and the history behind it. Once upon a time, Norba was a flourishing, wealthy Latin town, some 30 miles south of Rome, perched on the Lepini Mountains. Its origins, much like those …

Filigree is magic: gold or silver threads, twisted together to create ephemeral shapes and delicate patterns. There is something so incredibly alluring in filigree jewelry, perhaps because it is such an  ancient tradition and one so strongly tied to our peninsula, …

For us Italians, it is a familiar melody and we all know its lyrics. Many of us learned it in elementary school, along with the first lines of our national anthem. But the rest of the world, probably, only got …

What a movie, Casablanca. The cinematography, the aesthetics, the music, the actors, of course. Who doesn’t have in mind Humphrey Bogart, dark and handsome, with his fedora hat and trench coat, in the famous airport scene where he says goodbye to Ilsa, interpreted …

Easter wouldn’t be Easter in Italy without chocolate eggs: yes, I know they are quite popular in other parts of the world, like Ireland and the UK, for instance, but we think that in Italy the art of chocolate egg making and …

Of all the provinces of Tuscany, Pistoia is, perhaps, the one we are less familiar with. Yet, it was Italy’s Capital of Culture only a handful of years ago (it was 2017), and it has one of the best-preserved and maintained medieval …

Once upon a time, Siena was as large as Paris. That was, of course, centuries ago, during the late Middle Ages and the early years of the Renaissance, before the plague epidemic of the mid-14th century, which killed between 75 and 200 …