Culture

Its advanced culture and economy during the Renaissance made the Italian peninsula such a desirable place that it also became an ongoing theater of war. Italian soil became a laboratory for a continental struggle that embroiled the numerous, divided Italian …

Powerful, iconic,  mysterious and  a tad unlucky, if you think the man he brought up as his own child ended up plotting against him and had him killed. This is Julius Caesar to us. The  man who led Rome to …

About 60 million people speak Italian in the Belpaese and an extra 1.5 million do it around the world, including France, Croatia, Switzerland, Slovenia,  as well as Argentina, Australia, Brazil and the US, of course.  A brief review of what …

I was born and I grew up in one of the most picturesque corners of rural Italy. Up north, tucked away at the feet of the Alps, hills were my childhood home, mountains the first thing I’d see in the …

Bridges are quite a wonder. We take them for granted, driving or biking or walking across with nary a thought of what a complex structure lies beneath us, supporting and safely transporting to the other side. Imagine, if you can, …

If you read us regularly, you know we wrote about buchette del vinobefore, but we must talk about them again, because these little quirky masonry wonders went  from being a rediscovered trend, as we reported a couple of years ago, …

Yes, again:  it’s his year,  in the end, expect to share few more morning coffees or relaxing evening aperitivi with him through our pages in the next few months. You see, it’s easy to think about him as some boring …

When I was  a teenager dreaming to travel to the US,  I admit Buffalo wasn’t on my list: admittedly, my knowledge of America was limited to what I saw on TV — Texas, California, New York City — and to …

The undulating ridge of four peaks in the Bergamasque or Orobie Alps embraces the panoramic village of Oltre Il Colle in the Alta Val Serina Valley. Mount Menna, Mount Arena, Grem, and Alben stand in a range called MAGA. The …

Imagine 37 thousand tons above your head, 116 meters towards the sky, your eyes lost in admiration of the 700 figures in  the  3.600 square meters of Vasari and Zuccari’s Last Judgement.  A lantern brushes up against the sky, while …