All Around Italy

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 …

One of the cons about traveling to Italy is the country has so many touristic hot spots it’s almost impossible to enjoy some quiet. One of the pros of traveling to Italy is that for each of those hot spots …

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. …

My dad had a bright red Moto Guzzi that in its day was quite sporty and cool, with its spreading eagle wings on the motorbike logo.  He was dating my mother, who rode sidesaddle like women did in the 50s …

All roads lead to Rome as the old saying goes – all 1,243 miles of road when we’re talking about the Via Francigena, the ancient byway connecting Canterbury to Rome. While the serious-minded, contemporary pellegrini (pilgrims) consider walking the full …

Fall is my favorite season. Yes, I love chestnuts, truffles, cardigans, chunky scarves and pumpkin pies. But the real reason I love the fall is another, it’s the dark. The dark  brings about hints of wintry chill, mixed with the …

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 …

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 …

New York is the Big Apple, Chicago is the Windy City and Los Angeles is, as its very name tells us, the City of Angels. Cross that pond and come to Italy, where you’ll find of course Rome, the Città …

Nearly three hundred years after its proclamation — 1719, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s heyday — the Free Port of Trieste was re-launched by a decree of the Government. There was a need for new legislation to take into account the …