Traditions

On the 7th of December, pizza Napoletana made it into the UNESCO Intangible Heritage List. A huge success for Italy, but also a huge success for the two million  people who supported its candidature throughout the world, many of them …

For millions of Catholics around the world, the Pope is a spiritual leader. For the Romans, he’s a fellow Roman, regardless of where he comes from. We Italians see the Pope as one of our own, used as we are …

Any trip to Southern Italy is never complete without browsing through dozens of ceramic stores from the Amalfi coast, to Puglia and throughout the islands. There is a saturation of maiolica artist studios, each with their own decorations and interpretations …

Ah, prosciutto – that lovely, pink hued, paper-thin sliced meat that has delighted Italy’s residents for at least 3,000 years. Perhaps not as romanticized as wine or olive oil (anyone for a cozy picnic in a pig pen or butcher …

String some lights, hang a wreath, decorate the tree, and deck the halls with every form of green and red imaginable – Christmas is nigh! But have you polished up your Urn of Fate – fattened your Fasson ox – …

Since the first days of language, humans have been passing on stories. From the sea shanties of Cornwall to the shadow puppetry of China, from the creation tales of Hula dancing to the drama of Caribbean calypso. Sicily is no …

We carry our own history in our name: it often tells about our relatives, after whom we may be named, or about name trends in the year we were born. It speaks of our parents’ tastes and preferences, whether they …

Click, click, tamp, swoosh! Click, click, tamp, swoosh! Clouds of steam plume above the shining, eight-spout Gaggia and a thick stream of unctuous, dark coffee trickles into tiny espresso cups, some topped with a velvety cloak of frothed milk, before …

While I write, I’m sitting in my own house in the hills of the Langhe, a good feet of snow outside. It’s that time of the year when the scent of mandarins’ peels burned on the stove fills homes all …

Photography is an incredible versatile form of visual expression, yet there are instances when only painters, with their brushes, charcoals and colors, can truly capture the essence of a place or the soul of a person. There is something so …