Traditions

The Easter celebrations of Sicily are as numerous as petals on daisy chains, with an endless procession of Holy Week festivities to choose from. Every small town has its Via Crucis which reenacts the final moments of Jesus Christ’s life …

The Alba White Truffle  is an old acquaintance of mine. Actually, is much more than that, is a real childhood friend. Born and bred on the luscious hills of Piemonte, with the silvery peaks of Monviso and Bisalta just outside …

Easter is a very important moment for the people of Italy: for those still actively practicing, it is a time of meditation and prayer, steeped in profound spiritual meaning; for everybody else, it remains deeply tied to memories of traditions, …

The Catholic Church has a lengthy tradition of collecting relics from saints and clerics dating back almost to its beginnings. Bones, clothes or artifacts from the person were carefully preserved in caskets, lockets and glass urns to commemorate and venerate …

It seems its name has very ancient origins, probably rooted in the Latin word mortarium, indicating the mortar used to ground pork meat.  Originally, its production area went from Lazio to modern Romagna, where acorn-rich woods provided a perfect living …

Italy is known all over the world for its ceramics. Indeed, handmade and hand painted pottery is common all over the country, from north to south: colorful and bold or understated and elegant, you can find almost everything made of …

The road into the Hyblaean Mountains snakes left and right, hugging the hillsides as the flora turns from spartan scrubland to holm-oak forest. It’s hard to not notice, after the 40 km drive up from the gem city of Siracusa, …

Crossroads and street corners have long been the haunt of peddlers, pickpockets and prostitutes. And as far back as ancient Roman times images of deities have been hung there to protect passers by from evil. Today over 500 statues and …

Lunigiana is a historical area nestled between Tuscany and Romagna that always survived on agriculture, a characteristic from which it inherits all of its traditional cuisine. Typical of this land is a sort of flat bread, testarolo, still cooked using …

Living on an island presents a number of challenges. The first priorities are food, shelter and a reliable source of drinking water. The earliest settlers of the Venetian saltwater lagoon, however,  only had two out of three as freshwater was …